


Fine, but not fine.

by prepare4trouble



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Blind Character, Blind Foggy, Canon Disabled Character, Foggy whump, Friendship, Gen, Legal Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-31 11:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 61,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3976939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prepare4trouble/pseuds/prepare4trouble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kinkmeme prompt, Foggy is temporarily blinded.</p><p>Foggy is injured in an explosion in the middle of Nelson and Murdock's latest court case, but as Matt investigates, he starts to wonder whether Foggy was deliberately targeted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was:
> 
> This wouldn't have to be a romantic thing, just them being v close friends if you absolutely prefer, but in any case I would love something where Foggy is temporarily blinded by something and neither he or Matt knows how long the blindness will last (or if it's even temporary at all). Maybe while working on a case someone attacks Foggy or kidnaps him to make a point, maybe he's just in the wrong place at the wrong time. In any case, Foggy being temporarily blinded and Matt having to essentially save him and then trying to comfort him/help him.
> 
> http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/1296.html?thread=1398544#cmt1398544

The case was going well, thank God. It was the only one they had and they had agreed not to charge if they lost. They were barely going to charge if they won, just take a small cut of any compensation they were hoping the judge would award when they sued their client’s evidence planting employer right back again. Matt had agreed all this. In front of the client and without discussing it with Foggy first. He was still a little pissed about that.

Okay, a lot pissed, but Matt had been right about one thing at least; it gave him the motivation to fight harder for the client, whom Matt was a hundred percent sure was innocent. Foggy wasn’t so sure himself, but he trusted Matt. Doubly now that he knew he could detect a lie at a hundred feet. Trusted him to detect lies, that was, not to tell the truth himself. Besides, the client would never have been able to afford to pay without the agreement. He would have have been stuck with an overworked public defender who probably have assumed he was guilty and wouldn’t have cared one way or another what happened.

One of these days though, they were going to have to go looking for clients who could pay them actual money. The kind that they could use to pay off the debts they were beginning to build up.

He stopped at the coffee stall and ordered his and Matt’s usual, and a latte for Karen. It was going to be a long day, they needed all the energy they could get.

And then there was pain. Searing agony. A flash of white, or maybe yellow. Did it matter? He wasn’t sure. Pain. His eyes. His face. In the background, somebody was screaming. Was it him? He wasn’t sure. It didn’t sound like him. Had he ever heard himself scream before? He wasn’t sure of that either.

Sirens. Police? Ambulance? Fire? He didn’t know. It sounded like they were all around him. Hands touching him, lifting him. Voices screaming, speaking, telling him things that he didn’t have the capacity to understand. Pain.

His eyes.

****

"I'm fine," Foggy said, not for the first time.

He was aware of fidgeting next to him, feet shuffling nervously on the floor, squeaking against whatever material it was coated with. Matt didn't believe him. Of course Matt didn't believe him. Even if he didn't have his abilities, he was intimately acquainted with an approximation of how Foggy would be feeling right now, and okay definitely wasn't it.

"You're not fine," Matt said. "I can tell when you're lying, remember?"

Foggy sighed. He may be a smart guy, but sometimes he wished his friend would just play dumb once in a while, like he’d used to before Foggy knew.

He was so far past not fine that he wasn’t even sure it mattered any more.

“What did the doctor say?” Matt asked. He had arrived less than five minutes ago. Foggy had him listed as his emergency contact, but when he had arrived at the hospital, the staff had been more focused on patching him up than checking through his phone to find someone to call. Foggy had had other concerns too, for that matter.

Foggy shrugged. He felt dizzy, he didn’t know whether that was a result of the explosion or the painkillers he had been given when he had woken up screaming. “Whole load of nothing. Vague, not wanting to commit to anything. You know, wait and see.” He paused, brushing his fingers across the bandage covering his patched eyes. “Or not, depending.”

He tried to keep his tone light. He was failing badly.

“Okay, I’m going to go and talk to him,” Matt announced. Foggy heard him rise from the chair next to the bed and begin to walk toward the door. “I can probably get a better read on what he’s thinking, give us some idea…”

“No.” Matt’s footsteps paused. Foggy imagined him turning back to face him, maybe he did, maybe not. Wasn’t like it would mean anything to either one of them. “Don’t,” Foggy told him. “I don’t think I wanna… I mean… what if it’s bad news?”

“What if it’s not?”

Foggy readjusted his position on the bed. He took a deep breath and released it as a sigh. One way or another, the doctor probably had a better idea than him which way this was going to go. He didn’t want to commit to a definite answer because there were no guarantees. They did the same thing with their clients; you don’t tell someone how you think the trial is going to turn out, no matter how certain you might be. You could be wrong.

He shook his head. The back of his head rubbed against the pillow behind him as he did, and he was fairly certain that Matt would notice the gesture, by the sound if not in the other way. If the doctor was feeling optimistic, that didn't mean things wouldn’t go wrong unexpectedly. If he was pessimistic, Foggy really didn’t want to know at all. “No,” he said.

“Alright.” He heard Matt sit back down, and relaxed instantly. 

“I’ll be okay,” he said. “Seriously, Matt, it’s not that bad. It’ll clear right up.” Probably. Maybe. “They’re sending me home tomorrow to wait it out, why don’t you get out of here, get some sleep or something. You can come back and mother hen me in the morning.”

He heard the chair creak next to him again, but he still flinched at the unexpected touch on his shoulder. He tried to cover by shifting in the bed again but he was almost completely sure Matt wasn't fooled. The hand on his shoulder squeezed supportively. He took another deep breath in, attempting to calm himself.

"I'm okay," he repeated, as though saying it again might make it true.

“I know. I’ll see you tomorrow," Matt told him, and even coming from him the words hit him like a punch to the stomach. 

He heard Matt's footsteps pause as though he had noticed the reaction. He turned and stepped back toward him.

“Foggy, how much could you actually see, before they put the bandages on?"

Foggy thought back. The memory was clouded with pain. Even now, after they had brought out the good drugs, his eyes throbbed under their bandages. He took comfort from that, if they hurt, it showed how much healing they still had to do.

“Technically more than you, I suppose. I don’t know, I could barely open them, and whenever the doctor did it for me, he shone a bright light in there. I could see that, feel it too.” He winced at the memory. “Blurs, colors. Nothing useful. Hey, if it’s bad news, how long will it take for the superpowers to kick in?”

“Nothing?” Matt’s voice caught a little. He ignored the poor attempt at humor and stepped closer. 

“It’ll be okay,” Foggy said, for what felt like the millionth time. It wasn’t fooling anybody, but right now all he wanted was for Matt not to be there any more. He wanted - needed - to be alone.

A squeak of shoes on the floor again as Matt stepped away from him. “Yeah,” his friend told him, “You’re… you’re probably right. It’ll be fine.”

“Go home, Matt,” Foggy told him. “And I mean home. If you turn up tomorrow beat to a pulp, I’m going to…” he paused, there wasn’t a lot he could do at the best of times, right now it would be a miracle if he even noticed. “…be pretty angry with you,” he finished ineffectually.

He heard the hint of a laugh before Matt answered. “I promise I won’t get beat to a pulp.” Coming from him, that didn’t mean much. He briefly imagined Matt turning up bruised and battered and arguing that pulping had not been involved.

Foggy listened to the sound his cane tapping on the ground in front of him as he left. He tried not to think about whether that would be his future. He remembered Matt’s stories, mostly humor mixed with a hint of remaining bitterness as he had recounted learning how to do everything for a second time. Learning how to get around without injuring himself, how to read, to navigate the city, cross roads without winding up beneath the wheels of a car or bus. Of course, Matt had had one hell of an advantage. But he had also been a kid. Foggy couldn’t imagine being robbed of his sight at such a young age. He couldn’t even imagine it now.

But then, he didn’t have to imagine it. He was going to be fine.

****

Matt concentrated of the beat of Foggy’s heart as he walked out of the hospital room and down the corridor. He allowed the rest of the world to fall away to background noise and listened to the steady, but too fast, rhythm. He felt sick. He felt as though the room were spinning around him and it was all that he could do to keep from falling.

“Sir?” A hand touched his arm. Foggy’s heartbeat slowed just slightly, still the far too fast tachycardia of panic. “Sir, I said are you alright?”

Matt blinked. He needed to sit down. The hospital smell of disinfectant mingled with the odor of blood. Bad memories rose unbidden to the surface of his mind and he struggled to squash them down. He pushed the well meaning arm away and didn’t bother to try to aim his gaze in the direction of the speaker. “I’m fine,” he said. He wasn’t.

Foggy’s heart was racing again, his breathing quickening. Matt touched the wall to orient himself and then walked away as quickly as he could get away with without drawing curious glances.

The cool air outside stank of gasoline fumes from the carpark. Out here, he could no longer differentiate the beat of a single heart over the roar of the world beyond. He felt his hands tighten around the top of his cane against his will. He wanted to punch somebody, but there was nobody to punish, not yet. He would find them, sooner or later.

He tried to calm himself. It didn’t work. Instead, he walked home, slowly, meditatively, counting his footsteps and concentrating on the sound his cane made as it touched the ground before him.


	2. Chapter 2

Daredevil stood on the roof of a building in the center of Hell’s Kitchen, listening carefully to the sounds of the city around him. Two blocks away, a man and a woman were having an argument on a street corner, in the building below him, two kids had been left home alone and were on the brink of coming to blows over possession of the remote control. Car horns beeped furiously all around him as angry drivers desperate to get wherever they were going attempted to battle their way through the city traffic.

He inhaled slowly through his nose, breathing in the scents of the city, filtering out the background smells of pollution, human sweat, dirt and grime. Nothing. Nothing that might lead him to the man responsible for the explosion. Not a hint of a scent of the materials used to construct the bomb, no brief glimpses of conversation that might lead him in the right direction.

Down on the street corner, the arguing woman screamed. Daredevil turned and sprinted across the roof of the building, leapt the narrow gap onto the slightly lower neighboring apartment block and jumped down onto the fire escape. He would keep trying to find his target, but in the meantime, there was other scum for him to take care of.

***

“And how exactly do they expect him to get to and from the hospital for these appointments?” Matt asked pointedly.

He was raising his voice noticeably, probably drawing stares from anyone who happened to be passing by. Foggy sat on the side of the bed that was no longer his. The tips of his shoes didn’t quite touch the floor. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic, and the general hum of activity beyond his room did nothing to drown out the argument taking place a few yards from him.

“I know you probably don't have experience, but take it from someone who knows; suddenly not being able to see is disorienting and frightening. He's going to need..."

“Matt,” Foggy said.

“…help with everything. You just want to sent him back to his apartment to…”

“Matt!” Foggy raised his own voice that time. He heard the argument fade instantly to silence. “It’s okay,” he said. “I told you this was happening yesterday. I’d rather be at home.”

He imagined a satisfied look on the doctor’s face as he heard him exit the room quickly while he had the chance.

“I want to be at home,” he repeated quietly. “I can’t do anything here except for slowly go insane.” His legs swung back and forth from the edge of the high bed and he turned his head pointlessly in Matt’s approximate direction. "You'll be able to help me anyway, right? If anyone knows what they're doing, it’s you.” He paused. “Even if you do cheat."

“Of course I’ll help,” Matt said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s irresponsible to send you home. What if you didn’t have anybody?”

“I do have people. They did ask, you know. Anyway, I guess they need the bed for actual sick people. Plus, I doubt my insurance would cover the longer stay. And like I said, I want to go home; I hate hospitals, you know that.”

Matt sighed. “Yeah, I know that. Me too. I don't think anybody actually likes them.” There was a pause. Nothing appeared to be happening for just that little bit too long. "Okay," Matt told him. "Let’s go.”

“Now?”

“You’ve been discharged already, so unless you’ve got something else you’d rather do first?”

"Nope." Foggy allowed his body to slide slowly off of the hospital bed until his toes touched the ground, then pushed off with a little more confidence. Then he stopped. He turned his head uselessly around the room, felt the air ahead of him with his hands and took a hesitant step forward.

A hand connected with his. Matt. Relief washed over him as Matt moved Foggy’s hand to make contact with his left elbow. “You know how to do this, right?” Matt asked him.

Foggy swallowed. “Not from this angle. I’m normally the one doing the leading, remember?”

“Just trust me and go with it. You’ll get a feel for it pretty quickly.”

He wasn’t convinced, but he didn’t know how else they were supposed to proceed, so, “Okay, lets try it,” he said.

Matt took a step forward. Foggy felt himself breathe in sharply and tighten his grip. He followed, trying to relax as he listened to the tap of Matt’s cane on the ground. The whole thing felt faintly ridiculous. Every step felt like it might plunge him into some unseen abyss that logically he knew couldn’t possibly be there, but Matt was right and they fell into a rhythm as he guided him through the corridors, into the elevator and down to the first floor. Matt walked more slowly than usual, careful to keep to a pace that Foggy was relatively comfortable with.

There was a swoosh of automatic doors and cool air on his face and he realized they were outside. Matt stopped.

“Why are we stopping?” Foggy asked him. 

The sound of an approaching car. It slowed to a stop right in front of them with a quiet but noticeable squeak of breaks.

“Taxi?” Foggy asked.

“You didn’t think I was going to make you walk, did you?” Matt said.

***

As soon as he heard the door of his apartment close behind them, Foggy relaxed. He allowed his hand to drop from Matt’s arm and reached instinctively for the light switch. His fingers found the smooth plastic quickly and he pressed the button with an audible click. He realized what he was doing instantly, and froze with his fingers still on the switch. He pressed it again to turn it off. A half hour journey across the city without seeing any of it and somehow he had forgotten that pressing the light switch wouldn’t have the desired effect. Stupid. It was the middle of the morning too, which also hadn’t made any difference. He decided to blame the painkillers still circulating around his system.

“I’ll make coffee,” Matt told him. “You want coffee, right?”

Foggy stood in the doorway to his apartment trying to envision the room around him. He kept the place uncluttered on Matt’s account, it was a habit he had picked up in college, around the third time his new roommate had tripped or stubbed his toe on something unexpected. Now he thought about it, he wondered whether the whole thing had been an act. He didn’t think so, somehow. 

He took a step into the mystery space that he had thought he knew so well. Hesitantly, slowly, feet barely rising from the floor, trying not to grope the air ahead of him like a horror movie monster, he walked across the room to where the couch should be. He reached out and felt a wave of relief when it was almost exactly where he had expected it to be, he was a little too far to the left, but that didn’t matter. He sank down into it as the smell of coffee began to waft out of the kitchen.

The chime of the doorbell sounded, followed by a rapping on the door. He sighed and got to his feet again.

"It's Karen," Matt told him. "I'll get it."

He moved quickly across the room behind him, and Foggy listened to the door opening.

“It's Karen," he heard Karen say.

He could hear the smile in Matt's voice as he answered. "Yeah, I know. Come on in. I was just making coffee."

Foggy leaned his head onto the back of the couch as he heard the door close and the distinctive sound of heels crossing the wooden floor of his apartment. He hadn’t expected to have to entertain guests.

“Matt, what the hell happened to you?” Karen said.

“Ah…” Matt hesitated. “Tripped, hit my head a bit. It’s not too bad.”

Foggy gritted his teeth and bit back a comment. For now.

“You sure?” Karen asked, sounding unconvinced, and Foggy really, really wanted to know how bad it was, but there was no way that he could trust Matt to tell him the truth, and no way he could interrogate him properly with Karen there. Damn secret identity.

“I’m sure. Had much worse,” Matt told her.

“Thanks for calling me," she said.

“Somehow, I doubt I’d have survived your wrath if I hadn’t. Coffee?"

"Isn't that usually my job?"

Matt either didn’t respond to the rhetorical question, or the answer was too quiet or too visual for Foggy to pick up on it. He turned in her approximate direction. "Hi Karen." he announced.

There was a pause, before her answer, just a fraction of a second long enough to be awkward. "Hi," she told him. "Foggy. Hi, are you okay? Shit. I thought Matt looked bad, but…”

He shrugged and tried to smile. "You know, excuse for a couple days off, I’m not gonna complain."

The sofa dipped as she sat down next to him. "What happened?"

He shrugged again. Wrong place wrong time. "Madman decided to try blowing stuff up, luckily for the city, his bomb making skills are pathetic. Unluckily for me and the coffee guy who’s currently unconscious, we happened to be there when it happened. Didn’t it make the news?"

Another pause, an exhalation of air through her nose. "Sorry, nodding. Trying to apply how I behave around Matt to you…"

"Weird?"

She laughed. "Yeah. A little."

Foggy didn’t smile. "Tell me about it."

"So..." He imagined her frowning in consternation, trying to come up with a topic of conversation. She floundered slightly.

"Now Matt's making the coffee, you'll finally be able to taste what a good cup tastes like," he said. ‘Take notes, we’ll be testing you later.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about those notes,” Matt told her. “You need to start with decent beans. These don't qualify.”

Foggy heard the cups deposited on the table, the sliding sound of Matt spreading them out, allocating the right cup to the right person.

“Yours is right in front of you, Foggy,” he said. “When pick it up, keep your hand low to the table so you don’t knock it over.”

“Uh huh,” he muttered, and decided to let the coffee go cold. It would have been one thing making a fool of himself in front of Matt, but quite another now that Karen had arrived. Or rather, now that Matt had invited Karen over, which he was going to have words with him about later. It wasn’t that he didn't appreciate the concern, but Matt of all people should have understood that he might not be up for entertaining right now.

“So,” he said. “The case. I never even thought to ask until now. How’s it going?”

“It’s not,” Karen told him.

Foggy frowned. “It’s over already?” It couldn’t be.

“The judge granted a continuance,” Matt clarified. “In light of what happened.”

“Is Eddie okay?”

Eddie was their client. Accused - falsely, Matt assured him - of embezzling tens of thousands of dollars from his employer. If he had done it, he was exceptionally good at hiding it. He was behind on his rent after losing his job, his ex-wife had suddenly decided he would be a bad influence of their son and was withholding contact. The man’s life was literally falling apart around him.

“He’ll be fine,” Matt assured him. “He sends his best.”

The trial had been going their way. The jury had been on their client’s side, they had been going to win. Any delay would give the multinational corporation that had employed him and their team of lawyers time to dig up more evidence against him.

“You need to keep working,” Foggy told him. “The team on the other side won’t be hanging out drinking coffee while they wait for the trial to resume. They’ll be working their asses off to dig up more evidence to convince the jury he’s guilty.”

“We are working,” Matt assured him. “But right now there are other things to worry about.”

***

“So,” Foggy said as soon as the door had closed behind Karen. “What happened to not getting yourself beaten up?”

Matt mumbled something inaudible and threw himself down onto the sofa where Karen had been sitting.

“Excuses,” Foggy said. “Whatever. Did you get the guy?”

“No. Didn’t you drink your coffee?”

Foggy shook his head. “I’d have knocked it over,” he said. “You know me, I can be clumsy at the best of times. Did you at least find the guy?”

“Just some scumbag beating his girlfriend for trying to leave him. He just got in a lucky punch. I got a few more. Honestly, I didn’t realize he’d left a mark.”

Foggy sighed. “You’re an idiot. You know that, right?”

“You’ve mentioned it once or twice.”

“I’m going to get you another drink. And a sandwich,” Matt told him. He got to his feet and wandered into the kitchen again. Foggy yawned and put his feet up on the couch. His eyes were starting to hurt a little as the painkillers wore off again. The hospital had issued him with both acetaminophen and ibuprofen. He reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the packets. His fingers traced the smooth card of the box until they found the braille printed on the front. He ran his finger over it without comprehension, not even knowing whether he was reading it upside down. It felt like nothing, a random series of bumps.

It didn’t matter. Whichever packet he was holding, he probably shouldn’t be taking anything else yet, he could still feel the strange, disconnected, dreamy sensation of the codeine in his system. He fished out the other packet, placed one on top of the other and out them on the table in front of him.

In the kitchen, he could hear the clatter of food preparation. He wasn’t hungry enough to stay awake.

From the kitchen, Matt noticed the change in Foggy’s breathing and heart rate. He finished making the sandwich and placed in in the refrigerator for later, then he walked through into the other room, pulled his laptop from his bag, and began to search news sites for any information about the bomber that he might find useful in tracking him down.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't like the name of this story. I'm open to suggestions if anyone can think of anything better!

At the other side of the room, Foggy began to wake slowly. His breathing and heart rate quickened incrementally and he adjusted his position in his sleep. Matt stayed where he was for now. He put aside the stack of evidence notes he had been checking over and opened his laptop again. He typed in the address of the first news site he thought of and skimmed the page with the screenreader until he found a news clip about the bombing. It said there had been two victims, but didn’t mention either of them by name. There was a video of an interview with someone who had been nearby at the time, he spoke of his lack of concern and almost mocked the bomber for his poor bomb making skills.

Idiots. They were taunting the bomber. They might not realize it, but every comment that suggested he had not done well enough was a challenge to try again. It was stupid and dangerous. And of course he probably would try again anyway, and if he did it would increase the chances of the police or Daredevil finding him, but actively encouraging a madman to try to hurt people just didn’t make sense.

“Matt? You still here, buddy?” 

Foggy was awake.

The words were spoken hesitantly, uncertainly into the room, aimed in no direction in particular. Matt pulled out his headphone and pushed back the chair with a scraping sound. “I’m here. Just doing a bit of research.”

“Hmm.” Foggy maneuvered himself into a sitting position on the couch.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better. Less woozy. I think the painkillers have worn off.” So had the pain, to a certain extent. Dialed back to a tolerable level, at least. “How long have I been out?”

Matt ran his fingers over the tactile display on his watch. “About four hours,” he said.

“Shit, really? Why’d you stay?”

Matt frowned. “You know I’m going to stay here for now, don’t you?” He realized he had never actually said it, but he had assumed it was obvious. What else was he going to do?

“Oh.” Foggy’s heart rate slowed just slightly as though a general sense of anxiety had just lessened. “Nah, you don’t have to do that. I know my way around my own apartment, I’m sure I can handle it.”

He might even be right. Foggy was obsessive about keeping everything in its right place on Matt’s account. He had been living here for quite some time and would have a decent visual map of the place in his head that wouldn’t be too difficult to translate into a tactile one. That didn’t mean there was any chance he was going to let him try it.

“I’m sure you could,” he said. “But what are you going to do with yourself all night? Not like you can read a book, you won’t get as much out of watching TV as usual, or be able to find the show you want to watch, I’d lend you my computer to browse the internet, if you knew how to use the screenreader, but you don’t. I’m mostly here to keep you from getting bored.” And from thinking too much and potentially dwelling on unpleasant thoughts, but Matt kept that part to himself.

“I’m on to you,” Foggy said. “You’ve been looking for an excuse to crash at my place since we got separate apartments. You were lying about me snoring, weren’t you? Admit it, you missed being roomies.”

“Something like that.” Matt placed the earpiece back in his ear and ran his fingers over the braille display. “If you’re hungry, the sandwich I made earlier is still in the refrigerator. Top shelf, right in the middle, on a plate covered in saran wrap.”

“What, you’re going to make me get it myself? You know I’m all injured and stuff, don’t you?” The false whining of his tone was combined with a smile, but a hint of genuine surprise.

Matt hit play and started the news video again. “Tell me if you get lost,” he said.

***

There was something seriously weird about eating when you couldn’t see the food. Even when it was only a sandwich. He remembered how impressed he had used to be when he first met Matt of his ability to eat a plate of food with a knife and fork. He had tried it once, alone in their dorm room when Matt had been out, a plate of instant noodles on his lap and his eyes closed. He had given up pretty quickly. Of course, he now knew that Matt had an advantage he hadn’t know about back then, but people did it. Regular blind people. They still ate food with knives, forks, spoons, even chopsticks and did it perfectly well.

“Hey, Matt?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“How about we order pizza for dinner?”

He imagined Matt grimace at the thought.

“Before you say no, I mean from somewhere nice. Seriously, your choice of restaurant, as long as they deliver. My treat. I just want something I can eat with my hands, you know?”

“Yeah.” Matt paused and Foggy heard the laptop closing and Matt’s chair being pushed out from underneath the table. “I know. I remember.”

“Really?” Foggy was genuinely surprised. “I mean, surely with the whole super senses thing, you just…” he broke off. “I’m being stupid, aren’t I?”

As he spoke, Matt must have walked across the room without him noticing. The couch moved as he sat down next to him. “My other senses didn’t just get to this level overnight, and I didn’t understand how to use them at first either. It was weeks before I even noticed that anything was unusual, and then for a long time I just thought it was just my other senses compensating for the fact that I couldn’t see. I had to re-learn how to do everything, just like anybody else who lost their sight. Anyway, details still escape me, I’m great at jumping between buildings and fighting, but a plate of pasta isn’t exactly the same skill set. I, I remember what it’s like to be afraid of doing things.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say I’m _afraid_ of eating something messy, it’s the thought of trying to clean up afterward that worries me.”

“If you think eating’s difficult, you should try learning how to cross the street.” Matt laughed, then stopped suddenly as though he had suddenly remembered the point of the conversation.

“Not helping, Matt.”

The couch dipped again as Matt shifted his position. “No. Sorry,” he said.

Matt had told him before about the aftermath of the accident that had changed his life. In some ways, since learning about his nighttime activities, Foggy had assumed that everything he had been told was, if not an outright lie, then at least an exaggeration. “No, _I’m_ sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“I guess I sometimes forget what that must have been like for you. I mean, you were just a kid. I can’t even imagine…”

Matt’s hand closed around Foggy’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. “It worked out fine in the end,” he said. “Anyway, don’t imagine it, what would be the point? You’re going to be okay. Lets do something fun instead.”

Foggy’s lips twitched into a smile. “I know what you do for fun, Murdock. I’m not going to jump off any buildings.”

***

Fun may have been an overstatement. He had packed a bag full of things they could potentially do to pass the time, but he realized now that there was very little that Foggy would actually be able to do. The braille playing cards and Monopoly game had seemed like a good idea when he had packed them, but now he thought about it with the memory of his first weeks of blindness suddenly fresh in his mind, he realized that Foggy wouldn’t have the necessary skill at reading braille to play.

“Are you a real person?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Male or female? I mean, are you male?”

“Yes.”

The game had been literally the only thing he could think of to pass the time. They had been playing for almost two hours.

“Are you famous?”

“Yep.”

“Actor?”

“No.”

Matt checked his watch. He had been wrong. It was more like forty five minutes, it just felt like two hours.

“Singer?”

“I’ve been known to belt out a few tunes after a couple of drinks, but I’m pretty terrible.”

“That’s not how you play the game, Foggy.”

Foggy snorted. “Yeah, well we’ve been playing for, what? An hour? I thought it was time to shake it up a bit. Fine, no. Not a singer.”

“Are you…” Matt paused, thinking. “Are you a superhero?”

“Yes. No. Maybe. I’m not sure if he qualifies.”

Matt smiled. “Are you Daredevil?”

Foggy’s heart rate increased and Matt knew he had got it. “No,” he said.

“Wait, no?”

“No. Iron Man, actually.”

“You remember that I can tell when you’re lying, don’t you?”

“I do. Do _you_ remember that I think that’s creepy?”

Matt sighed. “Maybe it’s time to find something else to do. Are you ready for that pizza?”

Foggy’s stomach growled in response.


	4. Chapter 4

Not being able to see was boring. Not the lack of vision itself, of course - that was frustrating and frightening and far too unfamiliar to be boring - but the lack of visual stimulation. The fact that he couldn’t do anything that he would normally do to pass the time. He didn’t spend huge amounts of time at home anyway, home was for sleeping, showering, occasionally eating and hanging out with Matt, but mostly he spent his downtime somewhere more interesting. Forced confinement didn’t suit him, especially when he couldn’t even read a book or watch TV.

Foggy explored his own apartment, something that he never thought that he would have to do again after he had moved in. It turned out that the image of it that he had in his head didn’t correspond exactly to the action of walking around without looking where he was going. Walking from one place to another was fine in theory, as long as when he pointed himself in the direction of his target, he didn’t find himself off by a couple of degrees. Doors and door handles mysteriously appeared capable of moving just out of his reach, always a few inches further than where he expected them to be.

He counted steps in his head as he walked, concentrating on trying to create a new map of the space in his head. It didn’t do much to alleviate the panic, but at least he felt as though he was taking charge in some small way.

He kept his stride as natural as he could, holding his arms out in front of him to detect any forgotten obstacles. Ten steps from the front door to the couch, twelve from there to the door to his bedroom. The bathroom was right next door to that. The kitchen right at the other side, twenty two steps from the bedroom, only eight from the couch. It was a something he had seen Matt do when exploring somewhere new, but he tended to use his cane and didn’t bump into quite so many things. On any things at all. Matt remained silent on the subject, and for that Foggy was eternally grateful.

He created a disordered list in his head, linking places together at random, with no common point of origin; running through mental exercises, trying to remember what he kept in which drawer of the kitchen, where he would find a can opener. Where did he keep the big knife that had the potential to slice his hand if he touched it by accident? Slowly but surely, things were beginning to make sense.

He didn’t want to think about how long it would take to do this out there in the rest of the world; if it would even be possible.

He didn’t want to think about whether it would need to be possible.

“Hey, Matt?” he called through from the kitchen. “You thirsty?” He opened the refrigerator door and stuck his hand inside apprehensively. He remembered buying soda at the supermarket the week before. He couldn’t remember what it was, but it was in there somewhere.

His hand closed around the cold round exterior of one of the cans and he grinned. Found them. Victory. Not a huge one, but he would take what he could.

“I’ve got… something.”

“Sure,” Matt told him. “I love Something.”

Foggy slid his finger under the ring pull and it opened with a hiss. He took an experimental sip. “It’s Coke,” he amended. He pulled another can from the shelf and kicked the door closed.

He tucked the unopened can under one arm and held the open one in the same hand, freeing up the other hand for searching for obstacles as he walked through into the other room. His hand bumped the table and he put the can down.

He heard the can dragged across the surface of the table and then opened.

Foggy pulled out a chair and sat down at the opposite side of the desk to Matt. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Just going over some case files. I’m back in court the day after tomorrow, I just want to make sure we didn’t miss anything they might use against us.”

His braille reader clicked as the line of text refreshed.

“It was going well,” Foggy said. “What makes you think there’s a problem?” The table top was covered with sheets of paper mostly printed in braille. He ran a finger over one of the lines at random. “Did you find anything?”

“No, and that’s what’s worrying me. Things were going well, but the prosecution was too confident. I’m sure they had something up their sleeves.”

Foggy’s lips twitched into a close approximation of a smile. “Do you use the heartbeat thing in court too?” He took a long drag of his drink and licked his lips. “You know, there’s a legal term for that, I think they call it cheating.”

“I didn’t say that, I just said they seemed too confident. I might have picked that up from their tones of voice.”

“You didn’t though, did you?” Foggy challenged.

Matt cleared his throat. “It’s not cheating, it’s using what I’ve got. It’s like reading facial expressions. I don’t actually know anything for certain, it’s just like having a hunch.”

Foggy shrugged. “Fine by me. I won’t argue the case for you not trying to win.”

“Do you feel up to helping?”

“Oh, you’re hilarious.” If they were not covered and held closed by the bandages, he would have rolled his eyes. 

“I’m not joking.”

He really wasn’t. It wasn’t that Foggy didn’t appreciate the effort, but going through discovery was a chore at the best of times, going through it for a second time was worse. Doing that while trying to make Foggy feel like he was being useful would be both impossible and a waste of Matt’s valuable time.

Papers moved around suddenly on the table, he heard his drink can being picked up and put down again out of the way. Matt slid something across to him and Foggy heard his chair scrape on the ground as he got to his feet and walked around to the other side of the desk.

“What are you doing?” Foggy asked.

Matt pushed something into his hand. Foggy explored it with his fingers. “Headphones?”

Matt pressed a few buttons on the laptop that Foggy now found sitting on the desk in front of him. “Put the headphones in. In just one ear is easier, you can still hear what’s going on around you.”

Bemused, Foggy complied.

Matt took hold of his hand and guided it to the keyboard. “I’ve disconnected the braille display and set the screenreader to read one line at a time,” he said. “It can be pretty annoying that way, you lose some of the flow, but it’s easier to keep track of where you are. Press here to move down a line. It’s a series of e-mails between our client and his direct manager.” He pressed Foggy’s index finger onto a key and a voice in his ear read out a string of words.

“What the hell was that?” He could make out most of the words, just about, but they were spoken so quickly that it was impossible to make sense of the meaning.

“Oh, right. Wait a minute.” Matt hit another series of keys. “Press it again now,” he said.

Foggy did as he was asked and the computer read the line of text again at a rate he could understand.

“Okay, so down to move down,” he pressed Foggy’s finger onto the button again, “up to move up and listen to something again.” He moved the finger to the button directly above the first and pressed it.

Foggy grinned. “Great. I can do this.”

Matt walked back around to the other side of the desk, picking up a stack of paper as he went. “If it gets too annoying, I’ll show you how to switch it to read the full page. Tell me when you’ve finished that one, I’ll move it onto the next for you. And be careful with that Coke, don’t spill it on my computer.”

“So what are you doing now I’ve stolen your laptop?” Foggy asked him.

“I’ve printed a lot of the computer files they sent us in braille and brought them with me. I’m going to read through that again.”

Foggy pressed the down key and the computer read the subject line of an e-mail.

“Hey, Matt?” Foggy asked.

“Hmm?”

He pressed the down key and the message started to read about plans for the work Christmas party. Probably not relevant. He listened anyway. “Have you got anything that’s printed instead of brailled?”

“A little. Most of it’s back at the office or stored on the hard drives, Karen’s searching through some of it, I’ve told her what we’re looking for.”

“Why not call her, get her to bring it over here? No point her sitting there on her own.” He would have suggested decamping to the office, that being their place of work and all, but he was comfortable here, and he knew where everything was. Moving didn’t feel like much of an option.

“You don’t mind?” Matt asked.

Foggy shook his head, “Why would I mind?”

“You didn’t want her here yesterday.”

“I did want her here,” Foggy told him. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but he had been tired and groggy and trying not to show how much he was freaking out. Now, the groggy tiredness, at least, had worn off. “I just didn’t really feel up to company. Anyway, we haven’t had a proper cramming session since law school. Get her to bring Red Bull and snacks. It might even be fun.”

***

Four hours and nothing.

It wasn’t fun.

“On the plus side, if we haven’t found anything the other side might not have either,” Karen said.

“That, or we’ve missed it,” Foggy added. “Matt’s usually pretty good at knowing when someone's got a trick up their sleeve.”

“Well, if there wasn’t so much stuff to wade through, maybe we’d have a chance.” Karen closed the laptop she had brought from the office. “I know you guys can’t tell,” she said, “but I’m glaring at the mountain of stuff like I wish I could turn it to ash.”

Matt shook his head. “They send so much on purpose, they want to bury the important stuff under the irrelevant files and hope we don’t notice it.”

“I propose a break,” Foggy said. “Preferably with salty snacks.” He pulled out the earpiece and put it on the desk in front of him, then turned to face Karen. “You brought snacks, right?”

She laughed. “Yeah, I brought snacks.”

They decamped to the other side of the room, where Karen fished the TV remote control from the side of the sofa and switched to a music channel, then reached into her bag, pulled out the Pringles and took a huge handful before handing them over. She leaned her head back onto the cushion of the sofa and closed her eyes. “Who knew being a lawyer would be so much work?”

Foggy raised a hand. “Me. If you’re no good at the hard work, you don’t last long in law school. Unless you’re Matt, that is. He somehow managed to make it look so easy I was half convinced he was cheating for most of the first semester.”

“Well, when you watch legal dramas on TV, they never show the characters sitting around reading pages and pages of crap and eating potato chips.” Karen said.

Matt grabbed the tube of Pringles from Foggy. “Wouldn’t exactly make for thrilling viewing,” he said.

Karen thought about it. “No, I guess not.” She finished her handful of chips and licked the salt from her fingers. “How are you doing, Foggy?” she asked. “I should have asked earlier, but you were busy with the whatever it was you were listening to.”

“A thousand irrelevant e-mails,” Foggy told her. “I’m okay,” he said. “Great, actually. I now know my way around my apartment with my eyes closed, so if there’s ever a power cut in the middle of the night, I’m much less likely to walk into a wall while I’m trying to find the candles.”

“He’s being sarcastic,” Matt said.

“Yeah, thanks Matt, I think she probably got that.” Foggy finished his own stack of Pringles and wiped his salty fingers on the leg of his pants. “Sorry, Karen. I’m fine, still waiting to find out anything.”

“He’s right though,” Matt added, “He really is less likely to walk into a wall.”

Foggy reached for where he thought the chips would be, he touched air. Karen nudged them closer until the tips of his fingers touched the tube and he grabbed it. “It’ll be good practice for when they cut the power for lack of payment,” he said.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There may be a bit of a delay between this chapter and the next. I'm going on vacation for a week tomorrow, and depending on my ability to get some time alone to write and whether I can find some wifi... well, we'll see.

The pouring rain made everything more difficult for Daredevil. The constant roar of drops hitting the ground all around him distorted the other sounds, throwing off his echolocation and leaving the world feeling fuzzy around the edges. It washed away some of the scents of the city and made others stronger. For a while, Hell’s Kitchen smelled clean and fresh, until the scents that added layers to his internal map of the city began to build up once again.

He leapt from rooftop to rooftop, searching for any scent of explosives, and evidence that the bomber was planning his next target. He swung by the site of the explosion. The cordons had been cleared away and the road was open again, people walked by as though nothing had happened there. Perhaps there were still visual signs of what had happened, but there was very little that he could perceive beyond a faint whiff of homemade explosives in the air.

He inhaled deeply and remembered the scent for later before it was washed away completely by the unrelenting downpour, then began to explore the area, hunting by scent.

He caught a whiff of the same scent just a few blocks east of his apartment block. He stood completely still on a rooftop, stretching out his awareness until he could hear, smell and taste everything that was happening in the surrounding area. It was coming from the next building over, several stories below.

He leaped from the roof and landed easily on the fire escape of the neighboring building. The metal clanged loudly, but short of a few elevated heart rates from some of the residents, nobody appeared to notice or go to check what had happened. He climbed down to the next level. He could tell already that there was nobody inside the apartment he was aiming for. There was a window left open just out of his reach. He leaped toward it and let himself inside easily.

The apartment was empty. Not just unpopulated, but completely and totally empty of almost all signs of human habitation, of anything but the smell of recently constructed explosives. He walked through the room slowly. The place was filthy, he could feel the dirt and detritus under his feet; hear it moving under the weight of his footsteps. The smell intensified near the door. There was a small table there. He reached out and touched the surface, it was empty, wiped clean.

Out in the corridor, footsteps were approaching, accompanied by two heartbeats, shallow breathing. He smelled gunpowder from a handgun one of the men was carrying. He tensed and moved to the side of the door, pressing his body against the wall. They might be going to another apartment, but if they were coming here… The jangling sound of keys being pulled from a pocket, the scrape of metal on metal as it was pushed into the lock just feet from his ear and turned.

He waited until the door closed behind the two men and. There was the plink of electricity as the light was switched on and a gasp of surprise as the men realized they were not alone.

Matt struck immediately, aiming for the lightbulb rather than the two men. It shattered, broken glass showering down onto the floor, plunging the room into what he hoped was almost complete darkness. He didn’t think the apartment was illuminated from anywhere else, except for any light from the city that might be coming in from the window.

The two men’s cries of confusion confirmed his assumption. He took the first out with a single punch. He staggered back into the wall and slid down onto the floor. The second put up more of a fight. He dodged and weaved like a trained fighter. A roundhouse kick to his ribs, a well aimed fist to the face. Matt ducked backward, dodged, then landed his own rain of punches.

The man pulled the gun then. He heard him pull back the hammer and take aim. Matt leaped low, skidding across the floor, the bottoms of his feet slammed into the man’s shins and the gun discharged into the wall. Matt grabbed the gun from the man on the floor and tossed it to the other side of the room.

“Who are you?” he asked. “Why did you do it?”

The man whimpered. His friend moved slightly on the ground next to him, beginning to regain consciousness.

“The bomb in the coffee stall,” Matt said. “Why?” He was running out of time. The gunshot had alerted the surrounding residents to the fact that something had happened, and this time they had decided not to ignore it. An elderly gentleman in the next apartment and a woman in the one below were both speaking to the emergency services. The police would be on their way.

“He…he paid,” the man said. “I didn’t know what he wanted it for, or where he was going to put it. We were paid to make a bomb, we made a bomb.”

Matt gripped the man by the front of his t-shirt and pulled him up off of the ground. He stank of phosphorus and body odor. “Paid by who?” he asked.

The bomber, or bomb maker, whimpered. “I don’t know,” he said. “Old guy, white. Gray hair.”

Matt pulled him higher off the ground. Outside, he could hear the sirens starting to close in. “Give me more,” he said.

“I dunno, man! Honest! He called me on the phone, special request, something nice and small, single target I supposed. I left the bomb where he told me in a trash can in the park, he left the money. I hung around to make sure he picked it up. I never saw him before!”

“You left a bomb in a park? Where children play!” Matt was almost snarling, anger threatening to take over now.

“It was safe! It was never going to go off without being triggered! I wouldn’t blow up no park, man!”

But he hadn’t known what the bomb would be used for. Single target. Had Foggy been that target? And if so, why?

He tensed his fist and knocked out the man with a punch to the jaw. Feet were running up the stairs now. He turned and ran for the window, leaving the two bomb makers behind to be discovered.

***

“I can request an extension on the continuance,” Matt said. “Judge Greenberg’s an understanding man, we really lucked out getting him. I’m sure he’d agree to…”

“No,” Foggy shook his head quickly. He didn’t know whether Matt would detect the gesture but he didn’t bother to explain himself. “You said yourself, the longer we delay, the more time the other side has to gather or fabricate evidence. It’s not fair to make Eddie wait.”

Matt sighed. “I don’t like leaving you on your own.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ve been living here for a year now, I know my way around.” Not as well as he had thought he had, judging by the throbbing on his shin and his forearm, both probably bruised as well as painful, but well enough.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with me? You wouldn’t have to do anything, but you could listen to what’s going on. You did more than half the work on this one, it’s only fair you should be there.”

Foggy shook his head. The last thing he wanted was to be dragged down to the courthouse for everyone to stare at while they either wondered what had happened to him or speculated on what was going to happen next. He would be trapped wherever Matt happened to put him, not able to leave on his own if he decided he didn’t want to be there, completely reliant on other people to help him with everything. It wasn’t that he was too proud to ask for help, but he just wasn’t ready for something like that. Not yet. Maybe not ever. “I’d rather just stay here, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll call Karen, then,” Matt said. “She won’t mind coming over.”

“I don’t need a babysitter!” Foggy snapped. He bit his lip, but it was too late to stop the angry tone in his words. He hadn’t meant for it to sound like that. “Sorry,” he muttered. The worst part was, he thought maybe he did need someone there. True, he would be better off here where he knew the space than at the courthouse, but if he needed to do anything more complex than walk to the bathroom and back or get himself something to eat or drink, he didn’t know how well he was going to cope alone.

“She’s not a babysitter,” Matt said. “She’s a friend. And she knows I’m back in court, so…”

“So it’s not me you’re worried about, it’s yourself. You’re scared of having Karen angry with you.” He couldn’t help but find that a little funny, actually. But not enough to actually laugh.

“Wouldn’t you be?” Matt sat down on the couch next to him. “Lets just say, if I don’t call her, the next time I turn up with bruises you might find that I didn’t get them while I was out being Daredevil.”

Foggy gritted his teeth. If Matt turned up with bruises, or even if he turned up with a stab wound, Foggy wouldn’t know about it unless he decided to tell him about it.

“I’ll be fine here by myself for a couple of hours,” Foggy told him.

He hoped he was right. He needed some alone time. Ever since he woke up in the hospital, he had barely had a moment to stop and think. Everything had been a whirlwind of doctors, tests, painkillers that made him too loopy to think straight, and Matt; Matt filling every waking moment with some kind of activity or conversation. It was obvious what he was doing, he was trying to stop Foggy from thinking about what might happen next. He didn’t mind, he appreciated having something to do. Being able to help out with work had helped more than he would have thought possible, but now he needed to stop, take a breath and think.

“You’ll call Karen if you need anything, right?” Matt said. “You have the voice recognition on your phone switched on, I checked, so all you need to do is press the button and say her name.”

“I know how it works,” Foggy told him.

“I can’t guarantee she won’t just turn up here uninvited.”

Foggy allowed his mouth to twitch into a small smile that he was almost certain Matt wouldn’t notice.

Matt sighed. “If you get hungry, there’s still a slice of pizza from last night in the refrigerator, second shelf, on a plate. I could make sandwiches before I go.”

Foggy took a deep breath. “Matt, if you don’t leave now, you’re going to be late for court. If that happens, the judge gets pissed at you and the client suffers. Go, or I’m going to chase you out of here myself. I can make my own sandwiches.”

He heard Matt open the door to leave. “Keep your phone in your pocket,” he said. “Or put it somewhere you know you’ll remember. If you need to use it in an emergency, you want to know exactly where it is.”

Foggy patted his pocket and felt the familiar shape of his phone there. “Yeah, got it,” he said.

“And Foggy?”

“Yeah?”

Matt paused and took a deep breath. “Please don’t feel like…” he paused again, “like there’s anything wrong with… It’s okay to ask for help.”

Foggy expelled air through his nose, not quite a derisive snort, but halfway there. “Says the part time superhero.”

“I’ll see you later.”

He wondered whether that particular phrase would ever stop sounding weird. “Yeah,” he said. “See you later.”

Matt appeared to hesitate for a moment before walking through the the door and closing it behind him, but Foggy couldn’t be sure.

***

“I read about it in the paper, but there wasn’t a lot of information. Is he going to be alright?” Eddie asked. The man radiated concern, Matt couldn’t help but feel touched on Foggy’s behalf. Facing fifteen years in jail if they failed to convince the jury of his innocence, and he seemed more worried about one of his lawyers than himself.

“He’ll be fine,” Matt assured him. He hoped. He didn’t know. He justified the lie to himself by the fact that he didn’t actually have any information to the contrary.

They were inside the courthouse, on their way to the courtroom. It was busy, not unusually so, but busy enough that it was difficult to keep track of who was who and notice familiar people among the crowd

A woman approached from the opposite direction, she slowed as she neared. “Mr Murdock,” she said.

Matt stopped. “Yes, can I help you?” He instinctively put out a hand for her to shake, she took it. Her skin was warm to the touch, almost as though she were suffering from a low grade fever.

Her heels clicked loudly on the tiles of the floor. Underneath the overwhelming scent of her perfume, he could detect a hint of a men’s cologne, one much more expensive than her own scent, so faint that he suspected she had simply been in the same room with somebody wearing it. Above that was the scent of her shampoo, hairspray and makeup.

“I’m Caroline Wyatt. We haven’t officially been introduced, I’m working with the prosecution team.”

One of the silent team of lawyers seated around the other table. He wasn’t sure whether the additional personnel served any purpose other than to look intimidating, but if that was the reason they were there, they were going to find the strategy disappointingly fruitless.

He turned to his client. “You go ahead, Eddie, I’ll meet you in there.” He smiled at the rival lawyer. “Of course, Ms Wyatt.” Her hands were clammy with nerves, her heart pounding so hard and so quickly it sounded as though it could break out of her ribcage.

“How’s your partner doing?” she asked. “I heard what happened to him. Is he..?” Unbelievably, her heart rate increased further, her skin temperature grew warmer.

“He’s doing as well as you’d expect.” Matt told her. “Thank you for your concern. What can I do for you, Ms Wyatt?” He didn’t mean to be rude, but they both had a trial to get to, on opposing sides. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a settlement offer. Not delivered in this manner. A delaying tactic, designed to make him late for court and set the judge against him? Unlikely, too juvenile, but not impossible. He needed to go, now.

“Not here,” she said. “It’s our client, he… oh God… I’m sorry. Can you meet me after court?” Without waiting for a response, she slipped a scrap of paper into his hand, then turned and fled in the direction she had come from.

Matt frowned. They couldn’t discuss the case, they were on opposing sides. He had a feeling that wasn’t what she wanted to discuss.

The paper was crumpled, worked through her nervous fingers to the point that it felt more like fabric than paper. Apart from that, it appeared to be almost completely smooth; there were no signs of any writing on there. On a good day, he could get a decent idea of what written text said, simply by the indentations and raised parts on the paper. He couldn’t detect anything written there at all, the paper was either blank, or professionally printed in such a way that the full piece of paper was covered with an even amount of ink, preventing him from feeling any differences in the texture. He ran his fingers over it briefly anyway, checking for anything she might have written there. There appeared to be nothing.

Baffled, he pushed it into his pocket and headed to the courtroom.


	6. Chapter 6

“Mr Murdock, you appear to be on your own today,” the judge said. They had been lucky to get Judge Greenberg, he had a reputation for upholding the rights of the little man, but he also had a tendency to state the obvious.

Matt nodded. He clutched his cane tightly with both hands. “Foggy…Mr Nelson… he’s going to need some more time.”

Somewhere at the other side of the courtroom, he could smell an expensive cologne. This time it wasn’t coming from the lawyer that had spoken to him in the hall, but from another man sitting at their table. Presumably a representative of the company that had employed their client. That was interesting, he hadn’t expected the company to take that much of an interest.

“Well,” the judge said, “I hope you’ll pass on my support. I’m sure everyone here is wishing him a speedy recovery.”

Over at the other side of the courtroom, he could hear the heartbeats of the opposing legal team. One in particular, that of Caroline Wyatt, pounded harder than the others. He couldn’t help but wonder, did she know something about what had happened? Could she have information that might lead him to the man who had paid the bombers? It could easily be his mind jumping to conclusions that weren’t there, of course, but that was the second time she had had a reaction to Foggy’s name.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” he said. “I’ll make sure he knows.”

He slipped his hand into his pocket, making sure the scrap of paper was still there.

****

Foggy was bored. Actually, no, bored didn’t even begin to cover it. They had worked late into the night and he was almost certain Matt had gone out afterwards, the upshot of that was that he had forgotten his promise to download an audiobook for Foggy to listen to while he was sitting around with nothing to do. It was no major loss, he had no idea what he would have wanted to listen to anyway, but at least it would have given him something to do.

He switched on the TV. It came on at the music channel that Karen had left on when she was last there. He wasn’t in the mood. He pressed the remote control at random and it jumped to another station. The middle of some TV show. He didn’t recognize the voices. Some kind of a soap, he assumed. It sounded terrible.

He pressed it again. Commercials. Again. More commercials. Again, some kind of medical drama. There was a way to switch on the audio descriptive tracks, but although he knew how to do it, he couldn’t do it by touch. Which was ironic, and a bit of a design flaw now he thought about it. Anyway, he knew that very few shows actually had a descriptive track, and if by some miracle he managed to find one that did, it probably wouldn’t be anything he wanted to watch. It wasn’t like he could check the TV listings. He switched the TV off again.

He ran the tips of his fingers over the bandages covering his eyes. The pain had reduced to a dull ache and he hadn’t even bothered to take a pill that morning. The worst part now was the uncomfortable feeling of part of his face being covered. It itched, and it was too tight, and too warm. He pressed his fingers in deeper, feeling the contours of his face beneath the padding. He wondered…

His fingers moved lower, brushing against the bottom of the bandage, teasing at the space between it and the skin of his face. They slipped underneath, just slightly, and traced the shape of his cheek just underneath. His appointment was tomorrow, but it suddenly seemed like an unreasonably long time to have to wait. It would be so easy to take it off now, even if it was just for a moment. He needed to see something; anything. The complete lack of visual stimulation was making him feel claustrophobic; like he was being buried alive. He took a deep breath and concentrated on the feeling of the oxygen filling his lungs. It didn't help.

Even through the thick bandage and his closed eyelids, he thought he could make out a slight glow where the morning sun shone in through the window. His fingers dug deeper underneath the bandage while his other hand explored the back, trying to find a way of unfastening it without it being obvious to the doctor what he had done.

No.

He stopped, pulled both hands away suddenly and clasped them together to keep them still. “Idiot,” he muttered to himself. “You’re gonna make it worse.” That was the last thing he wanted.

He got to his feet and walked to the window. It wasn’t his imagination, he could definitely see light through the bandage, it wasn't as thick as he had realized and today must be a brighter day. He felt for the handle, pushed the catch and opened the window, the sounds of the city flooded into his apartment along with a cool breeze.

He turned to walk back to the couch, but his hand touched something unexpected; something he didn’t recognize. He reached out and explored what he had found. It appeared to be a long, thin piece of plastic, rounded, smooth to the touch. The top was thicker, maybe made from a different material. He knew what it was. A cane. A white cane. One of Matt’s spares, a necessity borne of his tendency to throw them away to chase the bad guys. Sometimes he was able to retrieve them later, other times he couldn’t. Obviously he had stashed it there in case he needed a spare while staying with Foggy.

He picked it up and felt the weight of it in his hands. It was light, but sturdy. He remembered playing around with one in college after a few too many drinks on more than one occasion while Matt laughed at his ineptitude. Matt made it look so easy. Of course, back then Foggy hadn’t known Matt’s secret. Even without the cane, he knew exactly what was going on around him. He may not be able to see it, but he knew it was there in that strange way that he hadn’t been quite able to explain in any way that made sense.

If he wasn’t still working on the assumption that everything would be fine after his visit to the ophthalmologist tomorrow, Foggy might resent that a little. But he was still working on that assumption, because there was no way that he could contemplate any other outcome. Even when his mind wandered into scary places and he found if difficult to steer it back again. Everything was going to be okay. It had to be.

He put the cane in his right hand and touched the tip to the ground, then allowed it to move from side to side along the floor in front of him in what he imagined was a close approximation of how Matt used it. He knew he was moving too slowly; too hesitantly. He knew his technique was probably all wrong and that if Matt were there he would probably be laughing at him again.

Actually, no. Matt wouldn’t laugh this time, he would be completely serious and try to help and be supportive and Foggy would hate it. Matt needed to laugh at him. As soon as he did, he would be able to actually believe that things were going to be okay.

The end of the cane hit something unexpectedly and it stopped while Foggy kept moving forward, driving the handle into his stomach

“Oof,” he winced in pain and clutched a hand to what was probably going to become his latest bruise. “Stupid thing,” he muttered.

The doorbell sounded and he jumped guiltily, as though he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t. He stashed the cane back where he had found it, leaning against the wall by the window, and resumed his usual method of walking slowly, holding an arm in front of him and trying to aim himself in the right direction.

He opened the door with slight apprehension, no idea who might be on the other side.

“Hey, Foggy.”

Karen. He relaxed.

“It’s Karen,” she told him.

Foggy stepped out of the way to allow her inside. “Did Matt call you?” he asked.

“No, so I figured court was canceled, but I called him and he didn’t answer, which usually means he’s in court. So did he just leave you here on your own?”

Foggy closed the door behind her and locked it. He shrugged. “Yeah, Karen. He abandoned me, all by my self in my own apartment. However will I cope?”

Karen sighed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you were…” She hesitated. “Oh, Foggy, are you okay?”

He hadn’t realized it was so obvious, with the patches and the bandage obscuring half of his face he thought he might get away with it. He had been fighting the urge to give in to tears by the time he reached the door, and as always happened when somebody asked if he was okay, his defenses crumbled. He managed to turn away before the sob escaped from somewhere deep inside him.

She was on him in an instant, arms wrapped around him, squeezing tightly, leading him to the couch and pushing him down onto the seat, whispering in his ear that everything was going to be okay.

He could hear his breath shaking as he fought to bring it under control. Tears were soaking the bandage from the inside and all he could think of was how uncomfortable that was going to be later. “I’m sorry,” Foggy said. He wasn’t sure why, it just seemed like the right thing to say.

Karen held him tighter. “You have nothing to apologize for,” she told him.

But he did. It seemed like breaking down over this was inexcusable. He was just thankful that Matt wasn’t there to hear him. It wasn’t that he had never cried in front of his best friend before, but the fact that Matt couldn’t see - forget the superpowers, he couldn’t see and he never would - made it feel so selfish to act like this when he knew that he was probably going to be okay. Except, what if he wasn’t?

His ophthalmologist appointment at the hospital loomed like some kind of terrifying specter and he just wanted it to be over with. It was that, and it was fact that the ache in his eyes had faded enough that he was half convinced all the healing had to be done now. It was the bruises on his shins, and the new one on his abdomen, but most of all it was an image in his head of Matt not laughing at him as he stumbled around with the cane.

He took a deep, shaky breath. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m not like this, honestly. I’ve never been a crier.” He could almost sense Karen’s incredulity.

He dug his nails into the palm of his hand and tried to concentrate on that pain instead.

****

Eddie was anxious. If it hadn’t been obvious in the too quick beating of his heart, the raised temperature of his skin, and the strange pattern to his breathing, Matt would have been able to tell by the tuneless tapping of his fingers on his own knees and the fidgeting, as though he was finding it impossible to keep still.

Matt didn’t know how obvious these details would be to the jury, but if they were able to pick up on it - and they probably could - it didn’t exactly suggest innocence. It didn’t matter that an innocent man would be just as nervous in his position as a guilty one, more so even, nerves equaled guilt to a lot of people.

The witness on the stand was a former colleague, someone that Eddie had told him he had considered a friend. Probably not any more; he was currently providing a damning testimony.

“So, what exactly did Mr Gonzales say to you that night?” asked one of the lawyers for the opposing side.

Garry Morgan, former friend, took a deep breath before he answered. Matt listened carefully, not only to his words but to their tone and inflection, to the rhythms he could detect under the man’s skin, and to the general mood of the courtroom as they watched and listened.

“He said he was sick of working there,” Morgan said. “He said we didn’t get paid enough for the work we were doing, while the bosses at the top raked in millions for absolutely nothing.”

Matt could hear the satisfaction in the lawyer’s voice as he asked his next question. “Did he say anything else?”

“Yeah…” A sudden increase in heart rate, a sure sign of an impending lie. “Yeah, he said if we weren’t getting the pay we deserved, we should just go ahead and take it. He said he’d found a way, something to do with computers; he explained it but I didn’t understand. I told him I wasn’t interested, the company’s always been good to me. I guess he decided to do it by himself.”

Matt reached across and touched Eddie lightly on the knee. “Try to relax. Juries can sense tension.”

“No further questions,” the lawyer said.

Matt got to his feet to cross.

“So, Mr Morgan, when Eddie told you about his evil plot to steal from your employer, why didn’t you go to them, tell them about it? You say they’ve been good to you, I’m sure they appreciate you returning the favor by not stealing from them, but if you thought someone else was planning to, why didn’t you say anything?”

“I dunno,” Morgan said. “I guess I thought he was just kidding around.”

“Even though the plan was supposedly so well thought out that you didn’t understand it, you still thought he was joking?”

Morgan hesitated. “Yeah,” he said.

Matt nodded. “No further questions.”

****

“Eddie?”

They were taking a five minute break and Eddie was still panicking. He barely reacted when Matt said his name.

“Eddie,” he said again. “It’s going well. The jury don’t believe your friend. Now we just need to make sure that they do believe you. Take a deep breath, try to stay calm.”

Eddie inhaled slowly through his nose and out through his mouth. “You really think they don’t believe him? How do you know? They looked pretty convinced to me.”

Matt shook his head. “I don’t think so. That’s better, keep doing what you’re doing.” He fished the piece of paper from his pocket and smoothed it out. “Can you do me a favor? I think there’s writing on here, can you tell me what it says?”

Eddie took the piece of paper from him. “It’s a flyer for a coffee shop, some new place, Central Park South, says it’s got great view, coffee, cakes… looks kinda European. Nice. Why?”

Matt shook his head. “No reason,” he said.

****

He found the place easily enough. He could detect the distinctive scent of coffee emanating from the building from two blocks away. It was good stuff too, different blends all of them much higher end than the average high street chain, and coupled with at least two dozen kinds of cake and pastry, and a few sandwiches and savories thrown in as is as an afterthought. When this was over with, he might have to bring Foggy there to celebrate, it was a coffee snob’s dream. It was probably expensive, but they deserved a treat when they won a case, and they would win this one, he was certain.

When nobody approached him as he entered, he assumed Caroline Wyatt had not yet arrived. Most people had the sense to call him over when he entered a crowded room. He sat down at a table in the centre of the room where he hoped he would be easily visible to her when she arrived.

A waitress appeared almost immediately. He ordered a latte, whatever blend she recommended, and sipped it slowly as he waited.

The clientele around him were predominantly young professionals chattering about business deals and groups of mothers talking about children. Through the chatter, his ears picked up a familiar word.

“…Daredevil sniffing around.”

He placed his cup on the table and concentrated on the speaker. He was an older gentleman, judging by the slightly irregular beat of his heart and what sounded like dangerously high blood pressure. He was seated by the window and his voice echoed off the glass and back into the room. He smelled of the same expensive cologne Matt had noticed in the courtroom. He spoke softly, quietly enough that he would expect nobody but his companion to hear.

“Unlikely,” the companion said. He was younger, nervous. He tapped his fingers incessantly on the table and on the outside of his coffee cup.

“Unlikely? He appears to take an interest in everything that happens in Hell’s Kitchen. Be careful, we need time, not the attention of the vigilante.”

“Sir, I’m sure that…”

The younger man broke off suddenly, some gesture or look by the older presumably quieting him.

“He can’t hear us, surely.”

“No, of course not, but I made a mistake meeting here, it’s obviously too close to court. Someone else might recognize me.”

He had been spotted. A scraping of chairs on the wooden floor and the two men got to their feet and walked out.

Matt began to stand, then hesitated. It was table service, he hated table service; too difficult to communicate to the waitress that he wanted to pay unless she was standing right next to him. She wasn’t, she was on the other side of the room making cooing sounds at a baby.

The two men reached the door. Matt fished his wallet from his pocket and snatched out a note at random without even bothering to check what it was. He only had low value notes anyway, and he was in a hurry. He left it on the table underneath his cup. He hoped it would be enough, but just in case, he dropped a few coins next to it as compensation for running out without saying anything, then fled the building as quickly as he could manage without arousing suspicion.

He was too late. The door of a taxi slammed closed just down the road, the smell of expensive cologne began to dissipate and the car drove away, in a westerly direction.

Matt clenched his fists and resisted the urge to thump something, mostly because the only things available were brick walls, windows and innocent passers by.

“Are you okay?”

He turned at the sound of a voice next to him, he hadn’t even noticed anybody approaching.

“Sir? Are you okay? Do you need help crossing the street, or…”

Matt ignored the speaker, turned away and walked back in the direction of Foggy’s apartment. It was rude, but he didn’t care, he wasn’t in the mood to humor people who thought they were being helpful today.

****

He arrived back to find Karen installed on the couch, as he had anticipated. The TV was switched on, but more as background noise with the volume turned down low.

“Locked everyone in,” Foggy was saying. “Seriously, no word of a lie, he wouldn’t let anybody leave till he’d finished the ‘trial’ and had me found innocent. Professor Asshole was not impressed. I thought he was going to have another stroke. He got me un-expelled, but I think he lost his teacher’s pet status that day.”

Karen was laughing hard. “I can’t imagine Matt as the teacher’s pet!”

“Oh yeah, he used to leave apples for the teacher, stayed behind to clean the blackboard, all that stuff.”

Karen laughed again. “You’re kidding!”

Matt put his spare key in the lock and turned it.

“Okay, yeah, that part’s bullshit, but the rest is 100% true. He literally saved my career. Without him I’d have been kicked out of law school and probably working as a butcher by now, if anyone would have taken me on. Matt’s a good guy.”

Matt pushed the door open.

“Whatever he’s saying about me, it’s a lie,” he announced.

Karen collapsed into peals of laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anybody is wondering, the story Foggy was telling at the end is from the comics. The 2011 series, #12. One of my favorites.


	7. Chapter 7

The waiting room felt big and empty. He could hear a couple speaking quietly at the other side of the room, but their voices were so low that he couldn’t make out the words. The chairs were cushioned, but somehow still managed to be incredibly uncomfortable; the backs too straight, the cushions too thin. There was a general hum of machinery in the air and a malfunctioning fluorescent light somewhere above his head that was annoying him so much that it had to be driving Matt crazy. Occasionally, somebody walked through, shoes either squeaking or clicking on the hard floor. He didn’t know what time it was. It felt as though he had been waiting forever.

Matt sat in the chair next to him. He had barely said a word since they had left the apartment and climbed into the taxi. Foggy licked his lips and took a deep breath. Matt touched his arm briefly in a way that Foggy imagined was supposed to be supportive. It didn’t translate through the touch. All he got was nerves, the exact same nerves that were currently trying to burrow their way out of the bottom of his stomach and into his lower intestine.

Foggy cleared his throat. “They probably won’t be able to tell me anything today,” he said. “Nothing solid, anyway.” He took a deep breath. He knew he was right about this, chances were he was going to return home in exactly the same condition he was right now with no news either way, but in case he was wrong… “Matt, would you wait out here? And, you know, not listen in, if that’s possible. I… just, in case it’s bad news, I want to have a few seconds to process, you know?”

“Okay,” Matt told him.

“Okay? Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Foggy opened his mouth to comment again, but before he could say anything else more footsteps entered the room. This time, somebody spoke, a woman’s voice announced his name. Foggy forced himself to his feet.

The nurse came over to him when she saw him stand. “Mr Nelson?”

“The one and only,” Foggy told her.

She appeared unimpressed. If his luck was anything to go by, her attention would be already focussed on Matt. Ah well, maybe she wasn’t as hot as her voice sounded.

“If you’d like to take my arm, I’ll show you through to the doctor.”

It wasn’t like walking with Matt. Although he was sure that she was completely competent, he found himself more nervous with her as his guide. He reached out with his free hand, searching the space in front of him for obstacles that she might had missed. He found none. Finally, after a short but terrifying walk down the corridor, she opened a door and let them inside.

She showed him to a chair which he sank into gratefully, and then disappeared back outside.

“Hello, Mr Nelson,” the doctor said. “You haven’t brought your friend with you today?”

Right. Meaning this was the same doctor that had been exposed to Matt in protective mode before he left the hospital. “He’s outside,” Foggy assured him. He cringed a little. “Sorry about the other day. He was feeling a little protective.”

He could hear a smile in the doctor’s voice as he brushed it off easily. “Not the worst I’ve had to deal with, I assure you. Now then, let’s get these bandages off and take a look.”

****

Matt got to his feet the instant he noticed Foggy and the nurse approaching. He had been trying, really trying, not to listen in. Instead, he had focussed on other things happening round him. On the first floor, a woman was in the later stages of labor. She was having twins, and she was very distracting. Over in the nurse’s station, there was a fairly uninteresting conversation between two women about the new doctor in oncology who one of them was sure was interested in her. Still, he couldn’t help but hear the occasional word of the far more important conversation happening just a few yards down the hall.

“How’d it go?” he asked as soon as Foggy was close enough. Foggy, he couldn’t help but notice, was still being guided. He took Foggy’s hand and transferred it from the nurse’s to his own arm.

“Erm,” the nurse said, confused. “Will you both be okay? I can show you to the door if you’d like.

Foggy waved her away. “We’re fine. He can take it from here.” 

She hesitated for just a moment before turning away and announcing the name of the next patient.

“Hang on a minute,” Foggy said. There was a rustling sound as he stuffed a handful of paper into his pants pocket. “Okay, good to go,” he said, and reached for Matt’s elbow again. Matt hadn’t moved, and he found it easily.

On the surface Foggy sounded fine, but there was an undercurrent to his tone, one that Matt could pick up on not because of his superior sense of hearing or his ability to listen to the speed of his heart, but because of the years of their friendship. He tapped the hand touching his elbow lightly on the back. “How’d it go?” he repeated.

“You mean you really weren’t listening?”

“Not to you. There are two nurses gossiping over coffee about a new doctor in oncology. Apparently he has the kindest smile they have ever seen, and he may or may not have sent the bunch of flowers that are sitting on the counter addressed to one of them. He didn’t. She sent them to herself to make the friend jealous.”

Foggy laughed, but it sounded forced. Matt began to walk toward the door. “So, do I need to ask again?”

They passed through the sliding doors of the hospital’s front entrance and out into the carpark beyond.

“He… I don’t know,” Foggy said. His voice suddenly became very small. “It’s healing, but it’s going to take time. He doesn’t know how much. There’s quite a bit of damage, you know, shrapnel, burns.” He sighed. “He doesn’t know whether it’ll clear up completely or not. Right now, I can see light. Like, too much light and nothing else. Everything else is so damn bright it hurts my eyes.”

Foggy’s hand on his arm was tightening its grip and he could detect the slightest of trembles through the contact. He doubted that anybody else would have been able to notice it. He turned suddenly through ninety degrees and steered him to an unoccupied bench to the left of the entrance. The area stank of discarded cigarette butts from the nearby trashcan. Matt ignored it. There was nobody else there, it was more private than the back of a taxi. This was not a conversation that could wait until they got back to Foggy’s place.

“Sit down here,” he told him.

Foggy complied without argument, feeling for the bench with his hands before collapsing onto it’s sturdy wooden frame as though his legs could barely hold the weight of his body.

“Can you see anything apart from too bright light?”

“Yeah, I…” There was a pause while Foggy forced his eyes open and looked around. “Shapes, blobs of color… Some bits are brighter than others, I guess when I was inside I could have found my way to the window,” he said. “Beyond that, everything’s just a big useless blur. Doctor says the light sensitivity should ease up after a while, and I’m going to need surgery when I’m healed a bit more too because the explosion scarred my eyes, which explains the blurriness, so there’s that to look forward to. That’ll clear it up some more, but they don’t want to do it ’til they know the full extent of the damage, if there’s anything else wrong deeper down.”

Foggy’s breathing was a little too quick, his voice a little too tight. Matt could hear the telltale signs of panic starting to appear in his tone.

“He’s left the bandage off, given me a huge pair of dark glasses to protect my eyes from the light, I bet they don’t look half as cool as yours. And he’s canceled the appointment tomorrow, apparently it’s not going to tell him anything new.”

“Okay,” Matt said.

“Okay? Is it, though? Because it’s really starting to feel like it’s not okay,” Foggy said. “He’s talking about taking lessons in… whatever they call it.”  

“Orientation,” Matt said. “Mobility.”

Foggy nodded and took a deep breath. “I’m looking at weeks, maybe months of waiting before I know anything. Even then, there’s this surgery, and recovery from that. I don’t even know when I’m going to be able to…” He stopped talking. He took a deep breath, and then another. And another. “Shit,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m trying very hard not to freak out here, but I was really hoping for better news, you know?”

Matt did. It was one thing to not be able to see when his eyes were bandaged, to have the patches off and to still be blind was another entirely.

“I’m being so selfish. Even if it doesn’t heal, I’ll be okay. People survive this, right? You did. Hundreds of other people, thou… millions, probably. Whatever happens, I’m okay. I’m okay.” He took another deep breath, he was beginning to feel dizzy. “I’m okay,” he repeated.

“No you’re not,” Matt told him. “You’re hyperventilating.”

Foggy nodded. His extremities were beginning to feel prickly with pins and needles. He recognized exactly what he was doing. He made a conscious effort to slow his breathing despite the feeling that he was drowning.

Matt drew him closer, his arms enclosed him, squeezing tightly in a crushing embrace.

As though proximity to his best friend centered him somehow, Matt felt the tension in his muscles ease slightly.

“You’re right, whatever happens, you’re going to be okay,” Matt told him. He released him from the embrace, but left one arm draped across his shoulders like a blanket. He remembered his father doing the same thing for him once upon a time. It had helped to be able to touch another person; to know that he was still there even if he couldn’t see him. “But it will get better,” he added.

Foggy shook his head. “And you know that how? And bear in mind that if you tell me you can predict the future as well as all the other stuff, I’m going to punch you in the face, if I can find it, and I don’t even care how much harder you’d hit me back.”

“I can’t predict the future,” Matt promised him. “I just know it will.”

Foggy sighed. “Well, forgive me if I don’t share your optimism. And by the way, since when were you the optimist in this friendship, anyway?”

****

“Something odd happened yesterday,” Matt told him when they arrived home.

“Oh?” Foggy pulled closed the curtains covering the window, plunging the room into relative darkness. Tentatively, he removed the dark glasses and opened his eyes. The light level in the room was low enough that the glare didn’t hurt as such, but it still wasn’t comfortable. His eyes began to water slightly.

Matt sat down at the table and opened his laptop. “One of the legal team for Dalton Incorporated asked me to meet after court.”

Foggy frowned. He turned to look in Matt’s direction, he couldn’t see him. What he could see was a blurry mess; shapes, the light color of the walls in contrast to the dark of the floor. He could just about make out the shape of the couch, but everything beyond faded into the background. He raised a hand in front of his face and turned it slowly. No details, nothing useful, just the vaguest of outlines. He couldn’t even distinguish the fingers from the rest of the hand. The hand balled into a fist.

“Foggy? What are you doing?”

Even the low light entering through the covered window was hurting him a little. He slipped the glasses back on and walked across the room. “Nothing. You’re right, that is weird. Did you go?”

“Against my better judgement, yes. But she never showed up. Someone else was there though.”

“That was pretty risky,” Foggy told him. “We’re a brand new law firm and right now you’re the only one of us that’s actually able to do anything. The last thing we need is someone reporting you for misconduct.”

Foggy heard him hit a few keys on his laptop keyboard and his braille display began to click softly as he read something. “I didn’t intend to talk about anything that would risk that,” Matt told him, “I don’t think that’s what she wanted. She was worried about something. Panicking even. And she said something about you.”

Foggy’s head snapped up and he felt his eyes struggling to focus on the shape of his friend sitting opposite him. “Me? What did she say?”

“Nothing, she mentioned you and her heart rate jumped up to about 150. It might have been a coincidence, she was nervous anyway, about whatever she wanted to speak to me about. Then she said something about her client and asked me to meet her and… oh.”

“Oh? Oh what?”

Another few soft clicks as Matt read further. “She’s dead,” he said quietly. “Overdosed. They found her in her apartment this morning. This doesn’t make any sense, I would have known if she was a drug user. Why would she do something like that?”

“Maybe she didn’t,” Foggy suggested. “If she had information someone didn’t want you to have…”

Matt didn’t answer, the braille display refreshed again and again.

“Well, one things for certain,” Foggy said. “That’s another delay in the trial.”

“That’s true.” Matt frowned. First Foggy, now Ms Wyatt. It could be a coincidence, but on the other hand it could not be. The man in the expensive cologne, the one who had been both in court and discussing Daredevil in the coffee shop, had mentioned buying time.

Matt closed the laptop with a click. “No pizza tonight,” he said, changing the subject suddenly. “I’m going to make some real food.”

Foggy hesitated. “I…”

“Just us,” Matt told him. “Make all the mess you like, nobody’s going to see it. The pain meds should be out of your system by now too, so I think beer might be in order. And maybe a movie. What do you think?”

Foggy sighed. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate Matt trying to drag him back to some semblance of normality, as impossible as it was going to be. He decided to play along for now. “A movie? You realize I won’t be able to tell you what’s going on on the screen, don’t you? You know those audio description tracks are never as good as me.”

Matt got to his feet and wandered into the kitchen to explore the cabinets. “I know, but I’ll pick a good one,” he promised.

Foggy allowed his head to rest back onto the sofa. This was going to be interesting. And by interesting, he meant awful.

“It’ll be fine,” Matt said.

And that was just great; more mind reading. Heartbeat reading. Whatever he was supposed to call it.

“We should be at the office,” Matt said. “Considering what’s happened. Someone will be calling to let us know what’s going to happen next.”

“We?” Foggy shook his head. He felt sick. Weeks. Months. Forever? Sooner or later he was going to have to leave his apartment. Sooner or later he was going to have to do all kinds of things. Not today. “You, maybe. I’m fine here.”

Matt hesitated. “I don’t have to go. Karen’s there, she can forward any messages. If I need to go in later…

“Seriously, Matt. Go. You’re right, at least one of us should be there.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”  

Foggy shrugged. “Just perfect,” he said, and went into the bedroom, hands trailing the walls as he walked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to point out that I have no experience of the american legal system or of medicine, beyond what I've seen on TV and researched online for this fic. So if there are any errors, please forgive me. If there are any glaring errors that are particularly annoying to you let me know and I will try to fix them!


	8. Chapter 8

Matt could sense Karen’s anxiety in the tense tone to her voice and the way she kept tapping her fingers on her desk, shuffling uncomfortably and checking her phone. It was as though she couldn’t keep still. He tried to ignore her.

The office felt unusually quiet without Foggy’s presence. He had probably been right not to come, realistically there wasn’t much that he would be able to do at the moment, but Matt really wanted to get him out of his apartment for any reason other than an appointment. The office made sense as a first step, it was another space that he knew reasonably well.

Or maybe it was a bad idea. He had no idea what he was supposed to do to help. He felt like he should know, on some instinctive level he should know what Foggy needed. Apparently it didn’t work that way.

He sighed, typed a few words and stopped to think. He was working on his closing arguments. It was something he could just as easily do at Foggy’s place, if the phone would just hurry up and ring so that he could leave.

Writing things down didn’t come naturally to him, it never had. He could talk the opposition under the table and make perfect, eloquent sense, but ask him to sit down and organize his thoughts into a written document and they had a tendency to fall apart. Instead, Matt wrote notes and bullet points, the vital points that needed to be included. The rest he would handle himself when the time came.

He drummed his fingers on the desk in front of him and listened to the sound bouncing off the walls of his office. The phone still hadn’t rung to tell them what he already knew. 

Finally, he saved his meager few words of text and gave up. He couldn’t concentrate on anything. He removed his glasses and gently rubbed his eyes, then leaned forward, rested his head in his hands and tried not to think.

“How is he, Matt?”

Matt blinked in surprise. He had been so busy not thinking that he had allowed his concentration to slip and Karen had managed to sneak up on him. Not intentionally, of course, but still. He needed to be more careful than that.

He put the glasses back on before he shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Not great, but he’s dealing.”

“Do you want me to go over? You’ve been here a few hours now, what if he needs something?”

“No,” Matt said. “He’s okay. He… treating him like a child isn’t going to help anything. He can call if he needs something.”

Karen walked further into the room and pulled out the chair at the other side of the desk. “Are you okay? You don’t look great either.” She froze, he could sense the blush in her elevated skin temperature. “I mean, you do look great, obviously, you always do. You look exhausted, like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

“Just like any other day then,” Matt muttered.

“What?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. I’m fi…” he stopped talking. He wasn’t fine. He wasn’t anywhere close. “I’m angry,” he said. “And I’m scared for Foggy, because he’s not handling this very well and I don’t know how long it’s going to be before he can see again.” He shook his head. “I don’t even know if he is going to. The doctors haven’t given him a straight answer and he won’t pin them down and ask them to because he doesn’t want to know if it’s bad news.” His hands balled into fists, taking a piece of paper from the desk with them. He screwed it into a tight ball and threw it hard across the room. It was an ineffectual gesture, it did nothing to make him feel better. “I’m terrible at this,” he added.

His concentration had slipped again, because Karen had managed to get to her feet and walk around the desk to the other side. The first he noticed of it was when she enveloped him in a tight hug. Matt made a half hearted attempt to hug her back, but he didn’t have the energy. Still, it helped. Not much, but it helped. And then it was over.

“Give him time,” she said. “It’s only been a few days, you can’t expect him to be okay that quickly.”

Matt nodded. “I know that. I don’t expect that. I expect him to be angry, or, or… I don’t know. I don’t know how to help him,” he said.

“Can’t you remember what people did for you?” she asked. “When you… you know, after your accident?”

He shook his head. “That was different. I was nine, I was a kid. It was just me and my dad. Kids… I guess maybe they’re more adaptable than adults, because frankly I think I handled it better than my dad did, at first, at least. I keep trying to imagine what this is like for Foggy, and I just can’t. That’s pretty ridiculous, right? If anyone should understand…”

“I think the important thing is that we’re there for him,” Karen said.

Matt drew in a deep breath and held it, feeling the air in his chest for several moments before expelling it through pursed lips. “Karen, there’s something I haven't told him; something that makes matters worse.”

“What is it?” Karen asked him.

Matt drew in a deep breath. “I can’t tell you why, and don’t tell Foggy about it yet, but I’m starting to suspect he was targeted deliberately. I think it’s something to do with the trial.”

“What?! What makes you think that?”

Matt shook his head and he lifted his approximate gaze as though to look at her while he waited for his words to filter through.

“Oh, right, can’t tell me. Sorry. But can you tell the cops?”

He shook his head. “I don’t have enough yet, and what I do wasn’t exactly obtained by conventional methods. I’m working on it.”

Karen sighed. “Please tell me you're not caught up in something that’s going to get you hurt. I’m already one boss down for the time being, if something happens to you I’m going to be out of a job. You’re supposed to be a lawyer not a private investigator.”

“I can do both, I’ll be fine,” Matt promised her.

“No. Go to the police with whatever you’ve got, do it anonymously if you have to, and spend your time being there for Foggy,” Karen said.

Matt nodded. He shouldn’t have said anything. “Maybe you’re right.”

***

She probably was right. That didn’t mean he was going to take her advice.

A name would have been nice. Something to go on; something that would allow him to search for the guy without actually physically searching. Unfortunately, he didn’t have one. He didn’t know who he was looking for, but he knew he had ties to Dalton Incorporated and he was acting very suspiciously. He was worried about Daredevil too, and the only thing that Daredevil had been investigating recently had been the explosion.

He wondered briefly whether he should have left this for another day. Foggy had been home alone for quite some time, and for all he insisted to Karen that he would be okay, and of course he would, Matt knew from experience that he would probably be going out of his mind with either boredom, anxiety or a combination of the two. He could have left this until tomorrow, but every day he waited was a day that the perpetrator was getting away with his crime. He had his phone on him, Foggy could call if he needed him. Whether or not he would, though, that was a different matter.

It was mid afternoon; far too early to put on the mask. The sun was still up and to the mostly sighted residents of New York, he knew he would stand out in a way that would not exactly be helpful to his mission. Instead, he dressed in a more mundane wardrobe. He left behind both his guises, that of Daredevil and his lawyer incarnation and dressed down in jeans and a plain t-shirt. His old black mask was shoved in his pocket, it was easier to conceal than the new costume and he didn’t know whether he might need to disguise his identity.

He found the office exactly where he had expected to. Dalton operated out of six floors of the eighteen story building, giving him plenty of other companies to choose from to visit. Unfortunately he had no plausible reason to visit any of them. Fortunately, the building had no main reception desk, allowing him to walk straight up the the elevator.

As he walked through the lobby and into the elevator, he could detect no hint of the man he was searching for. As he approached the fourth floor, he caught a whiff of expensive cologne.

The doors opened into Dalton’s reception and he did a quick sweep of the area. A large, empty space with one small reception desk, currently unoccupied. He hadn’t expected to be so lucky. The smell the perfume was stronger here. He followed his nose along a narrow corridor for several yards before he was stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

“Sir?”

A young woman, early 20s as a maximum. She smelled of coffee and cheap perfume.

“Can I help you? Do you have an appointment, or…”

Matt turned to face her and put on his best helpless blind guy facade. He smiled. “Hi. Sorry, I must have missed the reception desk. I’m looking for Daniel Ruiz.” The name was pulled out of the air, he hoped that by some irritating coincidence there wasn’t anyone by that name actually working there.

He got lucky. The receptionist’s embarrassment was obvious as she answered. “I’m sorry, sir. There’s nobody by that name employed here.”

“Sure there is,” Matt told her. “This is the third floor, right? Ashton Computing?”

Her embarrassment deepened as, if the temperature of her skin was anything to go by, did her blush. Her voice increased slightly in volume, as though she thought he might have trouble hearing. “Oh. No, no I’m sorry. This is the fourth floor. You need to go down one level.” She was gesturing too. He wasn’t sure exactly what she was doing, and he couldn't think what she thought it might achieve.

“Oh. Damnit, I’m sorry,” he said. He turned to leave. “I, uh,” he smiled back at her, “I don’t suppose you could show me the way back to the elevator, could you?”

She allowed him to take her arm, and even stepped into the elevator to press the correct button for him, just in case he was completely incapable. But then in her defense, that was probably a fair assumption for her to make. He had just been wandering around the wrong company looking for somebody who didn’t exist. He thanked her profusely, waited for the doors to close, then pressed for the first floor and exited the building quickly.

The man he was looking for wasn’t just connected with the company, he appeared to have an office there. That meant he was probably high up in the management structure. He had been in court sitting with the legal team for the company, and Matt was almost certain he had had something to do with the explosion. He was responsible for hurting Foggy. He was going to pay.

Matt loitered outside the building until the businesses inside began to close for the night and a few at a time, people started to filter out.

The mystery man didn’t leave late. Accompanied by his cloud of expensive scent, he walked out of the building just after five and strolled away down the street. Matt pulled on the mask as he followed. It was still daylight, but he knew how not to be seen. He quickly scaled a building to conceal his location as he tracked his target.

Surprisingly, he didn’t get into a car or a cab, nor did he head for the subway. Instead he turned another corner and proceeded on foot.

Matt tracked him easily, unseen from the rooftops as he walked several blocks to an apartment building and let himself in the front door. After several minutes, Matt entered the building too, and followed the stench of cologne to a penthouse apartment.

Everything in him screamed to strike now. He resisted. Not in his street clothes with nowhere to stash his cane. Not only hours after a fairly confused blind man had walked into the offices of the company where the guy worked, the company which a very similar looking blind man was fighting in court. Too many co-incidences and someone might start to piece them together.

Besides, he had plans for dinner.


	9. Chapter 9

Matt knocked on the door with the back of his hand, the heavy bag he was holding swung forward and hit the wood as well, creating a strange echoing sound around the empty hall. On the other side of the door he heard Foggy’s heart rate spike suddenly. The scraping sound of a wooden chair being pushed out from beneath the table and the thumping sound of suddenly displaced air as a large book was closed quickly. Matt frowned.

He could hear Foggy’s apprehension on the other side of the door as he approached. He could barely remember what it was like not to know exactly who was on the other side of a door, or a wall, or a building for that matter.

"It's me," he said.

Foggy's heart rate dropped a little. The door opened. "Lost your key?" he asked. “Please tell me you didn’t, because the last thing I need is to have to pay for a new lock right now.”

"No," Matt told him. He had been letting himself in and out of Foggy's apartment with his spare key for the past couple of days as though he lived there. He knew Foggy didn't mind, he had never had much concept of personal space anyway and had handed over a copy of his keys the day he had moved in. Matt minded. Especially now.

Even as a kid, the things that had bothered him most about the loss of his sight was the change in the way that people treated him and the loss of his independence. He wasn't going to start doing the exact same thing to somebody else, and especially not to his best friend. This was Foggy's home, and he had never just let himself in before, no matter how many times Foggy told him to, he wasn't going to start now. 

He held up a bag of groceries, making sure to make the plastic crinkle as he did. "My hands were full." he said.

"You went shopping? _You?_ " 

Matt laughed. Actually, he would love to be able to say yes, but he didn't go shopping for groceries and Foggy knew it. It wasn't that he didn't want to, but it was too difficult alone and asking somebody to go with him just seemed like too much of an imposition, especially when there were other ways of doing it. Buying online and having things delivered was just easier, when he remembered.

"I came back via my apartment," he said. "I had some stuff delivered the day before the... the other week.” The explosion. The accident. Whatever they were going to call it. "No point letting it go to waste there.”

Foggy snorted. “Typical, you finally get around to buying some food, then you move out and leave it all there.”

“I got some equipment too.” Matt added. “I'm willing to bet that your kitchen scales probably don't speak." He left his cane by the door and walked through to the kitchen where he deposited the bag on the counter.

Foggy followed him more slowly. "You're right," he said. "They don’t. But the main reason for that is I don’t actually have any. You know I'm more of a buy readymade guy. Cooking isn't really me."

"Yeah, I might have noticed that before," Matt told him. "First time for everything."

"I'm not that bad," Foggy told him, "I have cooked before, I just tend to... wait a minute, what do you mean?"

"You're not going to let me do all the work are you?"

Foggy groaned. "Why did I have a feeling you were going to do something like this?"

"I guess you just know me too well," Matt said. “Anyway, I'll need some help figuring out your kitchen. It's chaos in here."

“Yeah, but it's an organized chaos," Foggy told him. "I know exactly where everything is."

Matt doubted that, but they were about to put it to the test.

***

The sun was setting, the light level in his apartment gradually reduced and as it did, so did the pain in his eyes. He didn’t switch on the light. Instead, he allowed the darkness to fill the room, coating everything, making the world more comfortable to live in. When it was dark enough, he removed the glasses and placed them on the coffee table next to the sofa. The same table that was responsible for the bruise he was sure he had on his shins from two days before.

As though roused by the memory, the injury throbbed. He ignored it.

He had been useless in the kitchen, not that there was any real change there, toast was his limit generally speaking, eggs when he was feeling ambitious. Matt had been right, too. He actually had no idea where anything was in the kitchen.

Eating had been an exercise in frustration; slow, difficult, embarrassing, exploring his plate with his fork, searching for elusive food that he knew was there, right in front of him, but just couldn’t find. Even when he did, actually spearing it with the fork was as much a challenge as finding it. He had no idea how Matt did it if it really didn’t involve using his abilities, and his instructions and attempts to help were not helpful, not really, as much as they sounded like they should be.

It had taken about three times too long to finish his plate. By which point the whole thing had been cold and he didn’t want it anyway. He wanted to cry. Actually, that was the last thing he wanted to do, but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to have a choice in the matter. He blinked angrily and took an only slightly shaky breath.

“You okay?” Matt asked.

Foggy breathed in again, slowly and calmly. It would pass, if Matt would just shut up, he would be able to get it under control. He reached for his beer, slowly, hand low to the table. Ironically, with the light so low, he could actually see better because he could stand to have his eyes open for any length of time without having to squint.

“Foggy?”

“Y… No.” He took a sip of his drink. “I hate that I can’t lie to you any more. No, I’m not okay. I hate this. Is that what you want to hear?”

“No,” Matt sounded taken aback, surprised at the outburst. “Of course not.”

He took another sip and placed it carefully on the table in front of him. “Well tough, ‘cause there it is. I’m terrified, and I don’t know how to deal with it because if I make out like this is a bad thing, I’m insulting you and all the other blind people out there who know it’s not the end of the world. And I know that too, it’s just that right now I’m finding it really hard to remember it.”

“The only reason most of us know that is that we had to find out the hard way,” Matt told him. “Do you think I found it easy at first? Sometimes it’s still hard.”

“Really?” He hadn’t known that. Matt had never told him that. He laughed off every obstacle that society put in his way, took every frustration as a challenge, worked around the things that were important and pushed straight through the things that weren’t, and never once did he give the impression that not being able to see bothered him. But then, why wouldn’t it? He had lost something precious, learning how to live without it was one thing, learning not to mind was something else entirely. “You never told me that,” Foggy said.

Matt didn’t answer. Foggy heard the sound of ripping paper as the label was slowly peeled from a bottle of beer.

“You should tell me stuff like that,” Foggy told him. “I know I can’t do anything about it, but you should still tell me.”

“Wanna watch the movie?” Matt said, not so skillfully changing the subject, diverting the topic of conversation away from himself.

He really didn’t. He was almost tempted to say yes simply to break the tension. He resisted the urge. It wasn’t that he was worried it would be awful - he knew it probably would be, but as much as he liked to mock the audio descriptive soundtracks and put them to shame with his superior descriptive skills, they weren’t that bad. They did the job. They weren’t a patch on watching the action unfold on the screen for yourself, but that would have been okay. He just didn’t want to have to deal with the glare from the screen. Not when he had just gotten comfortable.

“Foggy?”

He sighed. “Do you mind if we don’t?”

“You sure? I chose one I know you’ve seen before, I thought it might be easier for you to follow what’s going on if you already know it.”

“It’s not that,” Foggy explained. “I just think the screen’ll probably hurt my eyes. It might be better to do it while it’s light some time.”

“Oh, it’s dark? Yeah I suppose it would be. I noticed you took the glasses off.”

Foggy had wondered many times before now what it would be like to inhabit a world of total darkness, where there was no difference between the brightest summer’s day and the middle of the night. This was the first time the idea had sounded vaguely appealing.

He backtracked on the thought the instant it entered his mind. That was not something he should be thinking. Not ever.

“Yeah, it’s dark. Ish. You know that kinda half light where you can still see, but only just?”

He heard a rustle of fabric as Matt’s shoulders shrugged against the chair where he was sitting. He was sure he wouldn’t normally have noticed that, he wondered whether Matt was making a special effort to be more obvious about what he was doing. More ripping sounds as he continued to shred the bottle label.

“Right, you probably don’t know. I guess you forget things after a while.”

Liquid sloshed in a glass bottle as Matt took a sip of his beer. Foggy imagined the label in a neat pile on the arm of the sofa.

“Matt?”

Matt put his bottle back down on the table. “Yeah?”

“Do you think I’ll start to forget what things look like?”

Matt froze in place, half way between the sofa and the table. “No,” he said. “You’ll be healed up before that even starts to become an issue.”

“I…” Foggy shook his head. He felt tears beginning the prick the corners of his injured eyes again. “60%” he said. The words came out as a hoarse whisper. He took another sip of his drink, it turned into a gulp, and another.

“What? What does that mean?” Matt edged a little closer to him on the sofa, concern was radiating from his body and Foggy could hear it in his voice.

“That’s my chances,” Foggy said. “The doc told me this morning. 60% chance of getting enough vision back to be useful. Now I was never great at math, but even I can work out that’s a 40% chance I don’t. And I mean, sure that’s including things like getting most of it back, but it’s also taking into account the possibility of something going wrong at it getting worse. 40%. That’s practically 50%, Matt. It’s practically a 50/50 chance.”

Matt edged closer still. An arm snaked around Foggy’s shoulders and pulled him toward the center of the sofa. Foggy allowed him, giving in to Matt’s gravitational pull as he always did. He leaned hard against him. He could feel his own breathing, ragged, too hard and too fast, as finally saying the words edged him closer to the panic that had been threatening to overwhelm him for most of the day.

Matt, to his credit, didn’t try to use the statistics to say something positive. The odds were in his favor, but that didn’t mean that they were good. Matt simply held him, breathing slowly and deeply in such a way that Foggy couldn’t help but copy. “I’m sorry for leaving you today,” he said. “I knew there was something you weren’t telling me, I wish…”

“It’s okay,” Foggy told him. “I needed time alone.”

He could feel the tears welling larger now. He blinked them away and allowed them to run down his cheeks. The light level in the room continued to lessen.

“I saw a story about you in the newspaper,” he said. “When you had your accident, I read about it. Did I ever tell you?”

He felt Matt’s head shake, leaning gently against his own. “You never said specifically, but you knew who I was,” he said.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you for days,” Foggy said. “Weeks, even. I thought what it must be like for you. I thought… I thought how glad I was that it wasn’t me. I’m sorry. I was a kid, I was… Do you think God is having some kind of a joke at my expense? Punishing me for thinking something so horrible?”

“You don’t believe in God,” Matt reminded him gently. “You told me that in college. You said he’s never done anything to prove he existed so you weren’t going to believe in him until he did.”

He had been drunk. They both had. He didn’t remember anymore what had prompted the discussion, what he did remember was that Matt hadn’t cared what he thought. There had been no argument, simply a difference of opinion. But a difference of opinion like that could have torn many new friendships apart before they had even begun. That was how Foggy had first known that he and Matt were going to go the distance.

“Maybe this is it. This is him telling me he’s there.”

“No. God isn’t some vindictive kid punishing people for every stray thought years after the fact. And even if he were, that’s not an evil thing for you to have thought. It was a man that did this, and believe me, he’s going to pay for it.”

Foggy pulled away slightly to look at Matt. He couldn’t see anything at all now beyond a slightly darker area in the barely illuminated room. “You know something, don’t you?” he asked.

Matt didn’t answer.

“Matt, what do you know?”

“Nothing yet,” he said.

“Who was it?”

Matt sighed. “I don’t know anything yet, Foggy. Believe me, I’d tell you if I did. But I’m going to find out.”


	10. Chapter 10

He hadn’t been lying to Foggy about what he knew. Not really. He had suspicions, ones he was pretty damn certain about, but nothing solid yet, nothing that would stand up in court, nothing that would even be enough for an arrest for that matter. But tonight that was going to change.

He eschewed the front door in favor of the little-used sliding one that opened onto Foggy’s tiny balcony. With a flying leap and a grab, he found his way to the identical balcony of Foggy’s upstairs neighbor, carefully avoiding the potted plants that almost filled the surface, then up to the next floor, and the next until in seconds he had reached the roof of the squat apartment building.

He made his way across town mostly by leaping between buildings, occasionally dropping down to street level, sticking to the shadows of the hidden alleys that it sometimes felt like only he and the criminal element knew. The streets below him were the veins of the living breathing entity that was New York, the cars and people its lifeblood. He listened to the roar of the traffic flowing through them, providing an audible map of the city that could be read and understood by him alone.

New York came to life at night in a way that it simply couldn’t during the day. It was as though the setting of the sun triggered a chain reaction that pulled forth an alternate version of the city, no better and no worse than its daytime counterpart, but wonderful, dangerous and exhilarating in a completely different way.

He located the apartment he had tailed his mark to earlier that afternoon. A tall building just to the east of Hell’s Kitchen. The man he was searching for occupied the penthouse. The views were probably spectacular. Too bad for him, he wouldn’t be there to enjoy them for much longer. The view from a jail cell would be much less enjoyable, but somehow that still didn’t seem a just enough punishment.

Sometimes, despite his love of the law and the justice system, Matt couldn’t help but be nostalgic for a time he had never known, a more biblical sense of justice. An eye for an eye.

If it was anything like most expensive penthouse apartments, the chances were that you would need a key to access the top floor via the elevator. Luckily, Daredevil had alternate ways of getting around. He scaled the building with relative ease, gripping window ledges, balconies and the irregular shapes in the brickwork until he reached the top. He bypassed the apartment itself and climbed onto the roof first. He listened.

He was relieved to find just a single heartbeat inside the large apartment. He listened carefully to it, listened to the sound of the TV, and the way the sound waves echoed off the walls creating an image of the layout of the apartment. It was nice. Spacious. Exactly as he expected. In the bedroom, a window had been left open.

He dropped down from the roof and hung over the city, feet swinging freely until they located the window ledge. He slipped one foot inside to use as leverage, then pushed the window open wider with the other, then he released his grip on the edge of the building, angling himself as he dropped, and landing inside with a small bump.

He froze, crouched on the plush carpet by the window, breathing slowly, listening. The fabric of the carpet and the bed had absorbed most of the sound of his entry, and the man in the next room did not react. Matt relaxed as he got to his feet and walked slowly and carefully toward the door.

The lounge area was on the other side of the door. It contained several chairs, a sofa, a TV, everything you would expect. The man sat in one of the chairs, emerged so deeply the news report on the screen that he still did not notice he wasn’t alone in his home as Matt pushed the door open.

It didn’t squeak. That was good, a badly maintained hinge could have ruined the element of surprise. The carpet absorbed the sound of his footsteps and he held his breath as he approached from behind. One arm snaked around the man’s throat at the same time his other hand clamped hard against his mouth, preventing him from screaming.

The man stiffened briefly before he began to try to struggle, his heart pounded, and panicked muffled sounds worked their way around Matt’s hand. He clamped harder.

“Don’t scream,” he said.

The man nodded, breathing hard against Matt’s hand still covering his mouth. He moved it away slowly, released his grip on his neck, and walked around to the front, bringing himself into the man’s line of sight.

The sight of the intruder in his apartment sent his heart rate even higher still. He pressed himself back further into the chair as though putting a few extra inches between himself and the man who had broken in to his home would make any difference. 

“My wallet’s in my back pocket,” he said. He began to reach for it. “Here, let me. I have a watch, my-my ring… take anything you want, just please…”   
“I’m not here to rob you,” Matt told him. He leaned forward, resting a hand on each arm of the man’s comfortable chair and placing his face inches from him. “You have information about an explosion last week. Tell me what you know.”

“I… I…I don’t know anything,” The man stammered.

His heart rate was through the roof, sweating and trembling in terror. Matt couldn’t tell the difference between panic and a lie. He shook his head. “You’re lying,” he said anyway. He raised a fist as though to punch, but he held back. Now that he was up close he could tell that the man wasn’t as old as he had originally assumed, he would place him in his late 40s, early 50s at the very latest, but he was clearly both unhealthy and not a fighter. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to hurt him, but he needed information more than he needed the satisfaction of beating him within an inch of his life.

“I… Help!” he shouted. Matt clamped a fist over his mouth hard, pushing until he felt teeth pierce the delicate skin of his inner lips and tasted the telltale traces of copper in the air.

“I said no screaming,” he said, hand still covering his mouth. “Nod if you understand.”

The man nodded again.

“If you try anything else, you will regret it, do you understand?” Matt could feel the anger burning deep and hot inside him, the hand that was not covering the man’s mouth balled into a fist. “Do you understand?!” he said again.

“Mmmph,” the man nodded emphatically.

Matt moved his hand away slowly. “What is your name?” he asked.

He could sense the man’s surprise at his question, obviously he had expected him to know exactly who he was. He didn’t question it though. “Da… Davison. Jonathan Davison.

“Good. Now tell me everything you know about the explosion. Why did you do it, who was the target? Was it the lawyer?” He deliberately didn’t refer to Foggy by name, he didn’t want to risk giving himself away.

“What lawyer? Wyatt? I don’t understand! Please, just…”

Matt froze, confusion nipping at the edge of his certainty. “You know something about what happened to Caroline Wyatt too?”

Davison shook his head. “I don’t know anything. You have to believe me.”

He didn’t. Panic can only last so long, and the man’s heart rate had slowed now to a level that allowed him to get a read on what was going through his head. He was lying.

He gripped the man by both shoulders and pulled him to his feet. He squirmed and struggled instinctively, but Matt was stronger. He pulled him toward the balcony. He had no intention of actually doing what he was going to imply, but hopefully when they got out there, the implication would…

“No! No, please! I’ll tell you!”

Okay, maybe they didn’t even need to get out there. He let go and Davison collapsed onto the ground. 

“We needed time,” he said. His voice was barely a whisper. “I didn’t give the order, he did it on his own, I only found out about it from the news this morning. I didn’t know.”

He was telling the truth. A truth that made no sense. “What did you hear on the news?”

“The overdose. My company is suing a former employee. I said we needed to buy some time, we needed a delay in the trial to… Wyatt knew something, and she’d been seen speaking to a lawyer on the other side, I suppose that’s why he chose her, but I swear I didn’t know about it.”

“He killed her?” Matt asked. Because she had been speaking to him. He felt like he was going to throw up. “Who?” It was the other man at the coffee shop, he was certain of that. He had probably done it as soon as he had left. As soon as Matt had failed to catch him.

“He’s called Donnelly. But I swear I didn’t know he was going to do it. I just told him we needed…”

“Time,” Matt finished for him. “And why did you need time?” He leaned in closer. “I can tell when you’re lying.”

Davison whimpered. “The trial,” he said. “We needed to find more evidence.”

Who did? Finding evidence was the job of the lawyers and their investigators, not normally the clients. “Find?” Matt asked. “Or fabricate? What did Caroline Wyatt know?”

Before Davison even began to answer, Matt had the information he needed. It hadn’t been about Foggy. Dalton had been fabricating evidence, probably paying or threatening witnesses to lie. They needed more time because the trial hadn’t been going their way.

“I never wanted anything to do with any of this.”

Matt wanted to ask more. He wanted to know why they were setting up his client, why it was so important that it was worth a woman’s life. He wanted to know what had happened to the money that Eddie was supposed to have stolen. He didn’t ask. That wasn’t why he was here. “What do you know about the explosion? The other lawyer was injured, was that anything to do with you, or this Donnelly person?”

Davison shook his head rapidly from side to side. Matt heard the sound of the skin of the back of his neck rubbing against the expensive shirt he was wearing. “No, that wasn’t us. I swear it.”

Matt’s heart sank. It was the truth. “Okay,” he said. “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go to the police tonight. Right now. You’re going to confess everything, and I do mean everything, and you’re going to name everybody involved. If you don’t, I’ll know. This ends tonight, nobody else gets hurt. Understood?”

The man shook his head. “They’ll kill me.”

Matt grabbed him by his collar and pulled him so close that all he could smell was expensive cologne and the whiskey Davison had drank an hour earlier. He snarled. “And what makes you think I won’t?”

Davison gasped again. Matt released his grip, sending him falling to the ground. He scrabbled backward along the floor before getting to his feet.

“I know who you are.” Matt added. “I know where you work and I know where you live. I’ll be watching you.” Figuratively speaking. Not that that part needed to be said. Judging by his pounding heart, the man was going to do exactly as he had been asked.

He didn’t move.

“What are you waiting for?” Matt said. “Go.” He drew back his fist and thrust it forward into the man’s jaw. It connected with a satisfying crack and he tasted blood in the air again. “Now!”

Davison turned and fled. His finger jabbed repeatedly at the call button on the elevator and he fell inside as soon as it arrived.

Matt went back into the bedroom and exited the building the way he had entered. He followed from the rooftops, tracking Davison to the precinct and then listening to the conversation until he was certain the man was saying what he had told him to. He even gave up the accomplice.

Eddie Gonzales should get the good news the next day.

It should have felt like he had achieved something. It did, in a way, but it was the wrong something. The victory, as satisfying as it was, felt hollow. The police dispatched a group of cars to pick up Donnelley, a murderer would go to prison for the rest of his life, his accomplice perhaps for a shorter time, but justice would be done.

Matt, however, was back to square one in his hunt for the man who had paid the bomber, and the trail was growing colder by the hour.

***

He let himself into Foggy’s apartment the same way he had left, it wouldn’t do to have one of Foggy’s neighbors spot Daredevil walking through the door or the building, or happen to get into the elevator with him. He had left the door of the balcony unlocked and he pulled it open and stepped inside, then froze in surprise.

Foggy was sitting on the couch.

He had made it up as his bed before he had gone out, complete with silk sheets tucked into the back and his pajamas on the pillow for easy location later. Foggy was sitting right at the centre. His breathing indicated that he was awake, but very tired, probably trying to keep himself up. The room smelled strongly of coffee, which only backed up that idea. It occurred to him that Foggy had made the coffee himself. It didn’t smell exactly like his usual brew, but Matt couldn’t help but feel a stab of pride that his tuition had paid off in some small way.

Foggy turned toward him with a slight creak of sofa cushions against each other. “How did it go?” he asked.

Matt pulled off the mask and locked the door behind him before he walked further into the room.

“Matt?” Foggy said. “You’d better answer me, because I’m like, 90% sure that’s you, but if you don’t say something pretty soon I’m going to assume there’s an intruder in my apartment and I’ll probably freak the hell out, so…” 

“It’s me,” Matt told him.

Foggy relaxed incrementally. “Good. So like I said, how did it go?”

Matt sighed. He sat down on the couch next to Foggy. The fabric of his suit slipped on the silk sheets and he leaned back to keep himself upright. “We’re going to get a call tomorrow saying the trial is over,” he said.

“What trial? Eddie?”

Matt nodded, for all the good it would do. He could tell by the absence of the sound that they made, that the lights were switched off, it was too early still for the sun to have begun to illuminate the room, even if Foggy would have been able to see the movement in the light, and he didn’t think he would, it had to be just about pitch black in there right now. “I thought Dalton Incorporated had something to do with what happened to you,” he explained. “I tracked one of their executives to his home, confronted him, but I was wrong. He was covering something up, but it was something else. Eddie was framed.”  

“We already knew that.”

“Yes, but now the police do too. I told him to go and confess to everything. It gets worse though. The lawyer, Caroline Wyatt…”

“The one that wanted to meet with you?”

Matt nodded again. He hadn’t even realized how much he did that until it had become pointless. “They killed her,” he said. “They needed to buy some time to fabricate evidence, bury other things, they wanted the judge to grant another continuance. They knew she knew things about them, and they saw her speaking to me, so she was convenient.”

He slumped slightly in his chair.

“They killed her because she was speaking to me,” he added.

Foggy put an arm around Matt’s shoulders and squeezed lightly, he shook his head making sure it made contact with Matt’s shoulder and neck as he did. “No,” he said. “No, Matt. Not your fault. They killed her because they are psychopaths, that’s what psychopaths do. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else. It might have been her anyway. And she’s the one that came up to you, not the other way around. You do _not_ get to blame yourself for this, do you understand?”

Matt sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”

“Good. By the way, your suit feels really weird to the touch. Not quite as weird as it looks, but still.”

“Sorry.” Matt ran a hand down one of his own arms and nodded. “It’s not like that on the inside.”

“That’s probably for the best.”

They lapsed into silence. After a few moments, Foggy moved his arm and stood up. “I should go to bed,” he said. “So should you. You need to be ready to pretend to be surprised when you get that call tomorrow.”

Matt stood. Foggy hesitated for a moment and Matt knew that he had more to say, but he turned and began to walk into the bedroom. His steps appeared less hesitant now. He was learning the space.

“You wanted to say something else,” Matt told him. He didn’t phrase it as a question because he knew it for a fact. Foggy wouldn’t be able to deny it because he knew that Matt knew.

Foggy turned back to face him before he answered. “It’s not important,” he said. “I was just wondering, do you think Caroline Wyatt did know something about… what happened to me? If they were willing to kill her to buy some time, why wouldn’t they be willing to hurt me too? Probably they wanted me dead. I bet they were disappointed when I survived and they only got a two day delay out of it. What if that’s what she knew? What if that’s what they didn’t want her to tell you?”

“It wasn’t them, Foggy,” Matt said. “I’m sure. He wasn’t lying.”

Foggy turned wordlessly back into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Matt stripped off the Daredevil outfit, changed into the silk pajamas still on the pillow and placed the suit back in his bag underneath the coffee table. It still felt strange to be able to discuss these things with Foggy. He wasn’t sure yet whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. He listened to Foggy’s heartbeat. He was still wide awake as Matt drifted off to sleep.

Tomorrow, he had to start all over again.


	11. Chapter 11

“Karen…Karen…Karen…Ka,” Matt picked up his phone from the coffee table next to his makeshift bed and half balanced it on his face, eyes still closed as sleep threatened to drag him back down.

“Uhhn?” he grunted. “Karen? What time is it?”

On the other end of the line, Karen sounded confused. “A little after eight. Aren’t you guys up yet?”

“Uh, yeah,” Matt told her. “We’re… I…” he sighed. “No. Late night.”

“So I assume you haven’t seen the news this morning?”

Matt pushed off his covers and reached for the TV remote control. Foggy usually kept it on the small table by the end of the sofa, but it didn’t appear to be there. He did a quick fingertip search of the surrounding area, but gave up quickly. It was easier to just ask. He knew what she was going to say anyway. “No,” he said. “What is it?”

“They’ve arrested someone.” Karen sounded excited, breathless.

“Davison,” Matt said.

“Who? No. They’ve arrested someone for the bombing. Matt, you’re not going to believe this. It’s the guy who owned the coffee stall. They think he did it for the insurance money.”

****

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

Matt had unmade his bed and folded his sheets neatly on top of the bag of clothes underneath the coffee table, freeing up the couch for sitting, but Foggy was standing near to the bedroom door, shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other as though he really wanted to be pacing but didn’t want to try it. His hands rubbed up and down his own arms as he embraced himself tightly. Matt was almost certain he was shaking his head.

“Dave’s a good guy. I’ve been getting coffee from him for months, he knows my order by heart. He knows my name, asks about how the business is going, one time I forgot my wallet and he let me have my drink for free. He wouldn’t do this, Matt. I know he wouldn’t.”

Matt stood up. “Are you sure” he asked.

“One hundred percent. I was there when it happened, I saw his face as the explosion went off. He wasn’t expecting it, Matt. He had no idea.”

“Maybe he wasn’t expecting it to go off then. Maybe it went off early, or…”  “No.” Foggy was definitely shaking his head now, vehemently too. “No, Matt. He didn’t do this. Oh, God, I hope he didn’t do this.”

Matt crossed the room in several steps and put a hand on Foggy’s shoulder. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to go and speak to him. He probably doesn’t have a lawyer yet. I’ll talk to him, see if I can get a read on whether or not he did it. If not, we’re down one client now Eddie’s a free man. We should have some time to look into his case.”

“Good. Yeah.” Foggy slumped against the wall near the bedroom. “Yeah, you do that. I’ll…” he tailed off.

He stood there, the unfinished sentence hanging in the air. Matt’s hand, still on his shoulder, squeezed a little tighter. “Want to come with me?”

Foggy shook his head. “No. Well, yes, I do. Obviously I do. But it’s not a good idea. And not just for the obvious reason. I’m the guy he allegedly injured, there’s no way they’re going to let me in there. I’d be amazed if they let you in.”

“Then you’ll be amazed,” Matt told him. “I’m incredibly charming when I want to be.”

“Yeah, don’t I know it,” Foggy said. “Just call me when you’re done, okay? And make sure he knows I don’t think he did it. Unless he did do it, of course, but I don’t think…”

“Okay,” Matt told him. “I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything. Can you call Brett, if you can get hold of him. Let him know I’m coming so I don’t have to explain everything when I get there?”

Foggy hesitated for a moment. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, of course. No problem.”

Matt grabbed his suit jacket and made sure his cellphone was in his pocket before he rushed out of the door.

****

Foggy walked back into the bedroom. He shivered in the early morning air, he was still barefoot, dressed in his sleepwear. Exhaustion gnawed at the edges of his brain, and he had no idea what time it was, but it had to be early. He had no idea what time he had finally gotten to sleep the night before, but it had to have been late. His eyes were still covered by two adhesive bandages given to him by the hospital to prevent him from touching or rubbing them in his sleep. He sat down on the edge of the bed and felt for the small table by the head of the bed. His searching fingers found his glasses first, but he left them where they were for now, located his cellphone instead and pressed the button on the front.

“Call Brett,” he said. The phone began to ring and he hoped it had heard him right.

The phone rang about seven times; long enough that he might have given up if he had any idea where the button to cancel the call was. Touch screens were stupid. He’d never understood why Matt didn’t get more pissed off with technology than he did. Now he understood it even less.

Finally, the ringing stopped and a voice appeared on the other end of the line. “Foggy?” Brett said. “I’ve been meaning to call you, but things have been crazy around here. How are you?”

Foggy bypassed the question and sat down on the bed. “Are you working today?”

“Yeah, on my way in now, actually. Why?”

“Matt’s on his way in. Dave…” he paused realizing he didn’t actually know the man’s last name. “The guy who’s been arrested for the bombing. Do you think he can get in to speak to him?”

There is a hesitation on the other end of the line and Foggy could imagine the expression on Brett’s face as he considered the request. “I dunno about that, Foggy. This is the guy that hurt you, right?”

“Allegedly,” Foggy corrected. “You don’t understand, it’s not about what you think. We’re going to represent him.” Hopefully. Assuming he was innocent. Creepy as it was, Foggy had never been more grateful for Matt’s ability to detect a lie.

Another pause on the other end as he thought through the implications of that statement. “In that case there’s not a lot we can do to stop him anyway,” Brett said. “Do me a favor though, swear he’s not going in there to whack the guy with his cane or something? That thing looks like it could do a bit of damage if he aimed it right.”

Foggy grinned. “He’s not going to hurt him, Brett. This is Matt, do you really think he’d be capable of hurting anybody? Look at him, he couldn’t hurt a fly. Literally, because you know, how would he find it?”

Brett sighed. “Okay, yeah. He’s in, assuming the guy agrees to see him.” He paused. “Seriously though, Foggy, are you okay? I heard your eyes got hurt.”

Foggy grimaced. “Burns from the explosion, shrapnel… not fun. But I’ve spoken to the doctors. I’m going to be okay, it’ll just take a bit of time.”

“That’s great,” Brett told him. “Listen, I’m just arriving at the precinct so I have to go, but I’ll call you, okay? Maybe come round. Something?”

“Sure,” Foggy agreed.

“Great. Bye, Foggy.”

“Bye,” Foggy repeated. To Foggy’s relief, the line went dead. He would have had no idea how to end the call himself.

He placed the phone carefully on the bedside table, remembering Matt’s warning to keep it where he could find it, and turned his attention to removing the adhesive bandages that protected his eyes at night.

He wondered what he was going to do with the rest of the day.

****

It had taken less than a minute for Matt to know that David Macintyre was innocent of planting the bomb.

He had to admit though, the police were right, the timing had been suspicious. It had only been three days before the explosion that he had upgraded his insurance package, not only on the mobile coffee stall that was his sole source of income, but also on himself; life insurance, critical illness, accident and injury. It didn’t matter though. There was nothing to tie him to the explosion, no payments going out of his accounts to unsavory people, no large cash withdrawals. Nothing to imply that he had purchased the components of the bomb and assembled it himself, nothing to imply that he would even have had the knowledge or ability to do that.

They hadn’t even charged him, the arrest was clearly simply to allow them to question him, apply a bit of pressure and hope that he would happen to make a spontaneous confession. He hadn’t, of course, and now he had legal representation. The police had no choice but to let him go.

“How’s Foggy doing?” Dave asked as they walked down the steps. “I heard he was injured, but you know what doctors are like about talking about other patients.”

“He’s…” Matt hesitated. “It’s going to take some time,” he said. He didn’t know how Foggy would feel about his sharing the details of his condition with casual acquaintances. When he got back, they needed to have a chat about that, because it was the first question anybody seemed to ask him recently.

“But he’ll be okay?” Dave asked. He was walking with a slight limp and clearly having a little trouble on the stairs.

Matt cleared his throat. “Yes, he will,” he said. It wasn’t a lie. Even if his eyes didn’t heal, he knew that Foggy would be okay. “If you don’t mind, I need to ask you a few questions. I know you went through most of this with the police before I arrived, but I just need to know if you have any idea whether anyone may have been targeting you? Whoever planted the bomb, they were either targeting you or Foggy. Was there any reason you chose to increase your insurance policies when you did? Any threats against you? Against your business?”

Dave shook his head. For a moment he said nothing, then realized and sighed. “Sorry, Mr Murdock, I was shaking my head. No, nothing I can think of. I only renewed the policies because the company called me up and said it was time to look at my cover, make sure it was adequate. I upped it because they suggested it and business had been going well, I thought I could afford the extra. You know how it is when you work for yourself, you need to make sure you’re covered in case you can’t work. There’s no sick pay for the self employed.”

“Maybe not even overt threats,” Matt suggested. “Is there anybody you’ve been having trouble with? Maybe somebody who doesn’t like you for whatever reason? Even if it’s something small, a bad feeling you got about somebody. Anything.”

Dave shook his head again. “Nothing, honestly. I’ve been working that same spot for three years, I have regular customers, not so regular ones, but I’ve never had any trouble from any of them. Not from the other stall holders either. We all get on.”

“At home then, any disputes with neighbors? Friends? Family members?”

“No. Honestly, nothing at all. Believe me, I’ve been racking my brains trying to think why someone would do this to me and I come up with nothing. No offense though, Mr Murdock, but why are you asking me all this? Isn’t that the police’s job?”

Matt smiled tightly. “Yes, and I’m sure they’re doing it well, but in addition to you, my friend was hurt. If there’s anything I can do to help bring the person responsible to justice, I’d like to try.” He took a business card from his pocket and handed it to him. “If you think of anything, or if you need legal representation at any point, if the police bother you again, call us.”

“Sure,” Dave said. He pocketed the card. “I’ll do that. Thanks Mr Murdock.”

“Matt,” Matt told him. “And I mean it, if you think of anything.”

They parted ways, Dave limping off to the east while Matt headed to the office. He listened to Dave’s vital signs as he walked away. He hadn’t been lying about not being involved, he was certain of that, but there was something he wasn’t sharing. Matt just didn’t know whether it was anything relevant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, reviews, concrit, suggestions and nitpicks are all very welcome.


	12. Chapter 12

Foggy let Matt into his apartment, then walked slightly unsteadily back to his chair, arms still outstretched to help him locate his target. He reached his destination reasonably quickly, he was impressed with himself. He sat down. As he did, his phone dropped onto his lap from the arm of the chair.

“What’s happened?” Matt said.

Foggy sighed. He had no idea how he knew. There appeared to be literally nothing that escaped Matt’s attention. He shook his head. “Nothing’s happened.”

Matt closed and locked the door behind him. Foggy heard him prop up his cane next to it and walk into the room. “Foggy,” he said.

Foggy sighed again. “Seriously, nothing. I’ve just gotten off the phone with my mom, that’s all. You know what she’s like.” The conversation had been difficult, and long overdue, and it was not what he wanted to talk about right now. “How did it go with Dave?” he asked.

“You were right, he didn’t do it. I never even thought about your parents, have you spoken to them since the explosion?”

Foggy shook his head. “I thought I’d better get it over with, save them both having a heart attack if I turn up to the next Nelson family get together sporting dark glasses and a cane.”

Matt didn’t reply. Foggy heard him sit down in the chair to his left.

“That was supposed to be funny,” Foggy told him. “Don’t get me wrong, I know it wasn’t, but you could at least do me the courtesy of pretending.”

Matt shifted his position in his chair. “Was she okay?”

Foggy laughed, short, sharp and bitter. “Not so much. She freaked out. She wants me to move back home with her and dad while I recover. Also, she’s pretty pissed I didn’t call her sooner.”

“Do you want to? Move home, I mean.”

“I can’t think of anything I want to do less. I’m staying right here. ‘Helpless and vulnerable,’ as she said, but right here, in my own home. I mean, no offense but you’re bad enough, at least this is kind of normal to you.” He sucked in a deep breath and held it for several seconds. “I think I finally get what you meant the day we met, about the way people treat you? I’ve seen it, but I never really knew what it was like to be on the receiving end. It sucks. I don’t want to think about what it’d be like to be stuck there full time.”

“I’m sorry,” Matt told him.

Foggy shook his head. “It’s fine. Either I’ll get better and it won’t be an issue, or she’ll get over it. Not like she dances around you any more, is it?”

“It’s different when it’s your kid,” Matt told him.

“Well, I sense a visit from them both in my immediate future. So there’s that to look forward to.”

He realized he was clenching and unclenching his fingers nervously. He forced himself to lay both hands flat on his knees. He loved his parents, he loved his entire family. He just didn’t want them to see him while he couldn’t see them back. He knew it was stupid, and he didn’t care.

He took another deep breath, closed his eyes, removed his glasses and scrubbed a hand across his face as though he could erase the entire conversation with his mother from his mind. “So, Dave,” he said. “How’d that go?”

“Well, like I said, he didn’t plant the bomb. He’s been released already, never charged. They didn’t even have any real evidence, I think they were just hoping for a spontaneous confession.”

Foggy groaned to himself.

“What?” Matt asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s just, that doesn’t bode well, does it? You know how it works. In the absence of any real evidence, they start arresting people and looking for confessions, then if that doesn’t work they put the whole thing aside and work on something else for a while and before you know it the case is forgotten, filed in a box marked unresolved and left to gather dust. The police have no leads, you have no leads. Whoever did this is going to get away with it.”

Matt sat down heavily on the sofa. “I’ll find him eventually,” he said.

“Well, I hope you’re right. It’s not even that I want him punished. I do, but really I just want to make sure he can’t do this to anybody else. Who knows, next time he might buy himself a bigger bomb and actually kill someone.”

Matt didn’t respond. Foggy knew he must have had the same thought.

“I wondered whether David was the target, he claims not to be able to think of anyone that might have wanted to hurt him. The thing is, he was hiding something. I just don't know what it is yet.”

“Huh,” Foggy said. “You know, that never even occurred to me. All this time I’ve been assuming someone was out to get me, or us. I’ve been worrying they were going to go after you or Karen next. I never even thought they might have been targeting Dave. Wow. How self centered am I?”

“It didn’t occur to me either until today,” Matt admitted. “Now I think about it, it makes sense.”

Foggy nodded. Timing the explosion to just the right moment when he was buying his coffee would have been difficult, there were any number of easier ways to attack him. In his home, on the way to work. A bomb in a coffee stand made just about the least sense of anything he could think of.

“That’s actually a huge relief,” he said. “I mean, I feel badly for Dave, but I’ve been expecting someone to bust through my door any minute and try to finish the job. It’s good to know that probably won’t happen.”

“Hopefully David Macintyre is prepared for the possibility.” Matt said. “And now I have another lead to follow.”

His glasses still in his hand, Foggy opened one eye just a crack and let some light in. The glare from the window ensured he could see nothing at all beyond a whitish fog. The pain was nowhere near as bad as it had been a few days earlier. Still there, but manageable. Especially if he looked away from the window. He opened the eye a little wider, then opened the other one. It didn’t improve things much, but a vague blur of color leaked into his vision, brown in the direction of his bookcase, red when he looked down at the weird choice of carpet that had been there when he moved in and he couldn’t afford to replace. His left eye was definitely better than his right. He slipped the glasses back on and closed his eyes because what he could see was as good as useless and it was just easier not to be reminded of that.

“Eddie’s trial is officially over,” Matt said. “I got a call pretty much the instant I said goodbye to David. The entire board of Dalton incorporated is under investigation for the murder of Caroline Wyatt and framing Eddie Gonzales, among other things. Eddie’s free to go, and he bought us a big box of chocolates as a thank you.”

“Ooh, gimme. Did you bring them here?” Foggy asked.

Matt didn’t answer immediately. Foggy knew that all the seemingly unnatural pauses in every conversation would probably go unnoticed if he could see. It made him wonder exactly what he was missing. He opened his eyes again instinctively, then immediately closed them again.

“No,” Matt told him. “I left them at the office. I was thinking maybe we could go there and collect them. If you feel up to it, maybe even pick up Karen and head back via Josie’s.”

Foggy sighed. For a moment he actually considered it. Not for the sake of the chocolates, he wasn’t about to be bribed into doing something he wasn’t comfortable with for the sake of candy, but for Matt, because it was obvious that he wanted it so badly. He sank back into his seat. “I don’t think so,” he said. He forced a smile, hoping that Matt might hear it and believe it was genuine, “I should cut back on chocolate anyway.” He patted his stomach demonstratively. “Let Karen have them, she could stand to put on a few pounds.”

He heard the springs of Matt’s chair squeak as he shifted his position. “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

“You know I’ve warned you about that,” Foggy said.

Matt expelled a puff of air through his nose, it wasn’t quite a laugh. “I… I’ve been thinking a lot about my… accident.” He stumbled over the word. It hadn’t been an accident, not really. Act of heroism would be a more accurate description. Foggy might have said something if he hadn’t recognized the nerves in Matt’s voice.

“Okay,” he said instead.

“Well, more like the time afterwards,” he said. “Adapting, getting used to doing everything in a different way. It was hard, but I think it was easier for me because…” he stopped, the words tailed off and the unfinished sentence hung in the air.

Foggy bit his lip. Matt didn’t talk about this stuff, not really. He might mention it occasionally. He was an expert at skirting around the edges of strangers inappropriate questions, mixing just the right amount of facts into a story designed to either make them feel good or really shitty, depending on the circumstances and Matt’s own mood at the time, but it wasn’t a happy memory for him, and he didn’t enjoy visiting it.

“Because… super senses?” Foggy ventured.

“No. Well, yes. I suppose it helped. Most of the time it felt like the opposite, but no, that’s not what I meant.” He paused again, took a deep breath, “I think the thing that made it easier was knowing… I knew from day one that it was going to be permanent. I knew I was never going to see again.”

“And that was a good thing?” Because it sure didn’t sound like it.

“I didn’t think so at the time, but probably, yeah.”

Foggy bit his lip and leaned forward in his chair. He wished he could see Matt; it would allow him to gauge how he was doing. He had all kinds of tells that Foggy wasn’t sure he knew about that provided anyone who knew him well enough with a key to read his emotional state. Without that, he was only getting half the information. Less, probably. Instead, his eyes provided him with a hazy blur, darkened slightly by the glasses. Judging by where his voice was coming from, the slightly darker patch somewhere in the middle was probably the chair where Matt was sitting. He wanted to tell him to stop, but he didn’t. He wanted to hear this.

“The doctors they, they kind of implied otherwise at first. They weren’t exactly lying, they were still doing tests and I think they genuinely thought there might be a chance, but I could hear them talking to each other. They didn’t know I could hear them, I couldn’t understand why they were being so obvious about it. But yeah, I knew it probably wasn’t going to get better. The only way forward was to adapt and learn.”

Foggy sighed. “Are you saying I’d be better off knowing what’s going to happen? Because I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, they can’t give me that answer.”

“Let me go with you to your next appointment,” Matt said. “Ask a few well-placed questions. Maybe I can tell you what they’re thinking. But that’s not what I meant. It’s just…”

Foggy held up a hand and Matt stopped talking. He wouldn’t have done that a few months earlier, he would have pretended not to notice the visual gesture even though he was completely aware of it. Foggy felt an irrational surge of anger at that thought, like he hadn’t felt since the night he had found out about Matt’s secret. Okay, maybe he had been wrong and stupid when he accused him of not really being blind, but on the other hand Matt had an advantage that Foggy never would, and every reminder of that hurt a little.

He ignored the feeling, it was his own issue, and not Matt’s problem. It wasn’t his fault he had superpowers. Anyway, Foggy was going to be fine. Maybe. Hopefully. But in case he wasn’t, he couldn’t let himself start resenting Matt for what he had, or he would start resenting everyone. It wasn’t something he could allow himself to do. He forced himself to smile, as though that would make any difference.

“If this is you telling me I need to learn how to do this properly, I’m two steps ahead of you,” he said. “I finally fished all the leaflets the doctor gave me out of my jacket pocket, and I’ve been trying to figure out how he expected me to read them all afternoon. I mean, what kind of idiot gives printed leaflets to someone he knows can’t see enough to read them?”

“I…” Matt faltered for a minute. “I suppose you’re supposed to give them to someone else to read for you. It’s not like he’d expect you to be able to read Braille.”

Foggy’s smile widened to a grin, a genuine one, because he was actually proud of himself for this. “Well, there was one with Braille. Just a business card stapled on one of the leaflets, but… Remember in college when I learned all the letters thinking I could share your books if the library ran out of something I needed?”

Matt made a sound somewhere close to a laugh. “I remember it didn’t go so well.”

“Not at all. I didn’t think about the fact that the illustrations online were black dots, the actual words in your books weren’t quite as easy to read, not that it was easy anyway. Plus there’s all those abbreviations in there that I didn’t know. Oh, and I hadn’t thought of the fact that you would need the books too, because I’m an idiot…” he shook his head, chasing away goofy stupid college memories and bringing himself back into the present. “Anyway, I still just about remembered all the shapes, and don’t get me wrong, it was pretty difficult to translate what they look like into what they feel like, but after an hour or so I managed to get a name and a number. It didn’t say who she actually was though, she didn’t bother putting that on the card.”

“She probably did,” Matt said. “It’s probably there, you just can’t read it. Don’t forget, print is smaller than Braille, you can fit more information in a smaller space.”

“Yeah, don’t I know it. My toe still hurts sometimes from when that massive text book dropped on my foot.”

Matt did laugh then, just a short burst that he quickly suppressed. “You knocked it off the desk. And lost my page, if I remember right.”

“Right. I knocked it, and it fell. I didn’t say it spontaneously leapt. Anyway, in my defense, I had had a lot to drink that night.”

“Not much of a defense.”

Foggy shrugged. “I’m off duty. I don’t have to come up with amazing defense strategies when I’m not working. Anyway, can I get to the point?”

Matt didn’t respond. Foggy waited, the silence stretched just a couple of seconds too long.

“Sorry, go on,” Matt told him.

Foggy frowned. “Did you just nod?”

“Uh… Maybe?”

He sighed and closed his eyes. Trying to focus through the blur was giving him a headache, and it obviously wasn’t helping anything anyway. “Fine. Great. So I called the number on the card. Turned out it was the reception desk for this blind charity. The name on the card was someone who worked there, she wasn’t around, but after a very nice chat about my awesome reading skills, she set me up with a lesson tomorrow. Cane stuff, you know? Someone’s coming round here, I don’t even need to go to them.”

Matt didn’t say anything again. Foggy waited for a response. Finally, he heard Matt get to his feet and walk across the room into the kitchen.

“Matt?”

The refrigerator opened and the sound of glass clinking onto the counter top preceded the hiss of two bottles of beer being opened. Matt walked back across the room and pressed one into Foggy’s hand. Foggy frowned.

Matt clinked Foggy’s bottle with his own and took a sip. Foggy followed suit. “Not that I’d ever turn down a drink at four in the afternoon, but why?”

“Tradition,” Matt explained. “Remember, at law school? What did we do at the start and finish of every semester?”

Foggy laughed. “If I get that drunk I won’t be fit to take the class tomorrow.”

He heard Matt sit back down in the same chair as before. He had never noticed how noisy that thing was until now. “You okay with this?” Matt asked him quietly.

“Yeah.” Foggy took a long drag on his beer then rested the bottle on his knee and felt the cold seeping in through the leg of his jeans. “It’s good, I think.” He took a deep breath and tried not to breathe too hard. He knew it wouldn’t make any difference; Matt would pick up on his feelings regardless. It was good, it just felt a little too much like accepting.

“It doesn’t mean it’s not going to get better, it just means you’re prepared, whatever happens.”

Foggy ran a hand through his hair. “I know,” he said. He took another sip of his drink. “Were you serious about not bringing me any of those chocolates? Because if you were, that’s just cruel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter came a lot quicker than normal. I'd love to say it's going to be that way from now on, but it's probably not, I've just had nothing to do all weekend but write, which was wonderful but doesn't happen often. Still, you never know.
> 
> Reviews and comments are loved.


	13. Chapter 13

“Hey, Karen, can you do me a favor?”

Karen stopped typing. “Sure, what’s up?” 

“I was hoping you could find some information on someone for me. David Macintyre. He’s…”  “…The coffee guy,” Karen finished for him. “The one they arrested the other day.” She pushed out her chair from under the desk and turned to face him. “The one you said was innocent. Have you changed your mind?”

“No, he didn’t do it,” Matt told her. “It wouldn’t hurt to check him out anyway.”

Karen frowned. “Are you sure? Because I didn’t like that guy. There was something shady about him, he just looked like he was up to something.”

Matt gave a half-smile and turned his head just a few degrees to one side. “I try not to judge people on appearances,” he told her.

She rolled her eyes. “Hilarious.”

“Anyway, Foggy trusts him.”

Karen smiled. “I think Foggy trusts people too easily. Okay, what do you need to know?”

“Just basic stuff. Address, anything you can find out about his family… That’ll do for now actually.”

“Really?” She opened a large brown envelope on her desk and pulled out a piece of paper, “because I’ve got more than that already. He’s not in debt, by the way. Well, he’s got a credit card with a few hundred dollars on it, but that’s all, so this insurance thing doesn’t seem to make sense for him. He’s got a kid though, nineteen years old, already been arrested twice for possession.”

For a moment, Matt looked confused. “You already looked into him? When? Why?”

“While you were off meeting him,” Karen explained. “I figured if he’d done it, you’d want to know everything about him, if you ended up representing him you’d still want to know. Anyway, it’s not like we’re snowed under with work right now, I needed something to do.”

“You’re amazing,” Matt told her. Karen felt a warm rush of pride swell within her. “Did you find anything else about the son?”

“David Macintyre Junior. I kept finding information on him by accident because he’s got the same name and address as his dad. He looks even more creepy, by the way. Not that I want to judge on appearances either, but seriously. He’s also either pretty stupid or he has no concept of privacy, because his Facebook is totally public and filled with posts about drugs and pictures of him hanging out with shady looking guys. He dropped out of high school last year, no record of any job that I can find, so I don’t know where he’s getting his money.”

“I might be able to make a guess,” Matt said.

“You’re not thinking about doing something stupid, are you?” Karen asked.

Matt frowned in apparent confusion, looking the absolute picture of innocence. “No, of course not. What would I be able to do?”

She didn’t believe him for an instant. “The insurance company hasn’t paid out yet on the coffee stall. They’re still investigating whether he did it himself. Apparently they make their own decision, and the police deciding he’s innocent has no baring on it. If the kid owes someone that money, they’re probably going to have a long wait.”

“We can’t jump to any conclusions,” Matt told her. “I’ll take what you’ve got here to Brett, chances are they’re two steps ahead of us anyway, but just in case.”

Karen touched the envelope full of notes and information with her hand, preventing Matt from taking it. He hadn’t made any move to pick it up, she wasn’t even sure that he knew about it. “Matt, you can’t do that. Not everything I have was obtained… you know… entirely legally. I mean, I’m not saying that I called the insurance company and posed as Macintyre’s wife, but I’m not saying I didn’t either.”

Matt smiled. “Don’t worry, I know how to be discrete.” He leaned forward, resting his hands on the desk, it almost appeared as though he were looking her in the eye. “By the way, didn’t you tell me not to play private detective not so long ago? You need to stop this now, we could potentially be dealing with some very dangerous people.”

“If that stupid druggy kid hurt Foggy…”

He shook his head. “I don’t think it was him. The bomb maker said it was an old man that paid him for the device.”

“What?” Karen stared at him. Matt removed his hands from the desk and backed off a few steps. “Who told you that?”

“I… Brett. Brett mentioned it when I was at the precinct the other day.”

Karen felt her eyes narrow in suspicion. “We should team up on this, Matt. If we’re both investigating it, we should work together.”

“I’m not investigating,” Matt told her. “I don’t do that. And neither do you. Stay out of it, please. I don’t want you getting hurt as well.”

Karen sighed. “Okay, yeah. No more research. I just want to point out though, that about five minutes ago you walked in here and asked me to investigate, so there’s that.” She smiled, reached for the box of chocolates that Eddie Gonzales had left for them, opened the lid, picked one out at random and popped it in her mouth. She pushed the box in Matt’s direction. “Chocolate?”

“No. Thank you.” He reached out and took the envelope from her desk. “Is there anything else in here, or just the stuff you have on the Macintyres?”

Damn, so he had noticed the folder. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised. She sighed. “No, just that,” she told him.

“Nothing in here with your name on it? Nothing that proves it was you that found it all?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

He paused, holding the folder a few inches off the surface of the desk. “Be sure,” he told her. “I can’t check.”

“I’m sure.”

Matt tucked the envelope under his arm, he walked through into his office and came out with his jacket on and cane in hand.

“Hey, wait, where are you going?” Karen asked him.

He didn’t bother to turn around as he replied. “Like I said, I’m taking this to someone who will be able to do something with it.”

****

Matt had toyed briefly with the idea of doing what he had implied and actually giving the information to the police, maybe posting it in with Brett’s name on the envelope, or perhaps having the man in the mask drop it off one night. He decided against it for now. It may eventually go to Brett or some other trustworthy cop, but that was dependent on what Matt found out first. No point sending the cops to hassle the Macintyres if they turned out to be innocent victims.

He stashed the file in his apartment instead, on a shelf in his wardrobe, underneath a stack of t-shirts, and hoped that him taking it away would be the end of Karen’s investigation. Realistically, he knew that was unlikely to work, but he had to try something. He didn’t doubt that she had copies of everything she had found, but believing that the police were looking into the same things as her might convince her to sit back and let them do the leg work. They still didn’t know for certain why the bomb had gone off and as unlikely as it may be, if there was somebody out there with a grudge against Nelson and Murdock, he didn’t need anybody else putting themselves in harm’s way.

The irony wasn’t lost on him. He didn’t care.

The wind blew hard at the top of the Macintyres’ apartment building, and there was a definite chill in the air, but he could feel the weak warmth of the sun on the side of his face. It was disconcerting, the reminder that it was daylight. Activities like this were supposed to be carried out under cover of darkness.

Not that he was doing anything illegal, or at least not that anybody would be able to prove. There would be no breaking and entering, no fights, no threats of violence. In deference to the time of day, he dressed in jeans and a t-shirt so as not to attract the kind of attention that a masked man in red or a guy in a business suit might if he were spotted hanging out on the roof of a building. He sat rather than stood, his back leaning against the concrete wall that housed the door that provided access to the inside of the building.

All around him, the wind chasing around the shapes of the buildings reminded him that this was not the tallest one in the area. There was a chance of being spotted if someone happened to notice him while glancing out of a window above him. Most likely they wouldn’t think anything of it, but it was impossible to be sure. He felt exposed in the daylight in a way that he never did at night.

The building beneath his feet teemed with life. From kids still too young for school playing and pestering their mothers for candy, to old men and women shuffling around their homes. He tuned them all out, and honed in on David Macintyre’s apartment. He listened carefully to every footstep, every heartbeat, and every word spoken.

David Sr slowly turned the pages of a newspaper from an armchair in front of the television. The volume was low and a documentary on the civil war was playing. He shifted his position in his chair often, the injury he sustained in the blast obviously still bothering him. His wife was assembling a casserole in the kitchen, occasionally shouting through to him with random comments. In his bedroom, David Jr appeared to be having a conversation via text message, there was no way for Matt to tell what that was about, even if he were in the room with the kid. 

He sighed quietly to himself, not quite sure what he had been expecting; for the family to be involved in a deep discussion about their son’s drug problem? For thugs to show up at the door demanding a payday? This was normal family life, at least as far as he could tell from his limited experience. Most people weren’t Foggy Nelson, they didn’t narrate their every thought or action. Unfortunately.

He sat there for several hours, listening to nothing. The tap of the son’s fingers on the screen of his phone, the pages of the father’s newspaper turning, his wife changing channels on the TV and then starting to clear up after herself in the kitchen. It was hopeless, the day wasted.

“Did you call the insurance company?”

Matt froze, halfway to his feet, listening for the response.

“Not much point. They’ll get to it when they get to it.”

“You need to call them. They’ll leave it as long as they can before they pay out, the more you bug them, the quicker you’ll get your money.”

David sighed and turned a page in his newspaper.

“Damnit, Dave. You’re entitled to that money, you’ve been paying them for it for long enough. Do they still think you blew up your own place? You need to make sure they know you didn’t.”

David didn’t reply. He turned another page in his newspaper and the conversation died out for several minutes, “Fine,” the wife muttered to herself. “If you want something done…”

David got slowly to his feet and walked into another room, then closed the door. Silence fell over the apartment once again.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was supposed to be longer. I mean, it's already pretty long as it it, but there's this bit at the end that's still incomplete and I was going to post the whole thing together. Thing is, I don't know how much writing I'm going to be able to do over the next few weeks. My brother died suddenly yesterday and I've spent the past two days co-ordinating with people I mostly don't know to get the information out to his network of friends that I mostly don't know while my mum flies back home from Croatia, and it has been pretty fucking awful and right now I'm just a wreck. To be honest I feel a bit bad posting this now, but he always encouraged me to follow my heart, and writing is that. I will try to continue the story as soon as I can, and you might not even notice any slow down in posting, but I don't know how I'm going to be over the next few weeks, I don't know how much or how little I'm going to feel like writing. Bear with me.

Foggy answered the door in blue jeans and a sweater, no shoes, just black socks. The bandages that had covered his eyes the last time she saw him were gone, and in their place were a large pair of dark glasses. On his chin he sported the beginnings of a patchy beard.

“Hey,” she said. “Just me.”

Foggy smiled when he heard her voice. “Karen, have you been avoiding me?” He stepped backward to allow her entry into the apartment. “I wouldn’t blame you after the pathetic display I put on last time, to be honest, but I thought I redeemed myself later.”

Karen winced at the memory of Foggy’s anguish on her last visit. She had understood completely, and it had not kept her away. She hoped that he was joking. She stepped forward, placed a hand on each of his arms as a warning, then embraced him quickly. “Of course not. But I didn’t want to just keep turning up like I thought you needed looking after.”

“Hmm,” Foggy mused. “I’m sensing Matt’s hand in that somewhere.” He closed the door behind her and walked back into the apartment. Karen followed behind him.

“Yeah, he might have said something,” she told him. “But he was probably right. I’d have been over here every time he was at the office or in court. I’d probably have driven you crazy.”

Foggy grinned. “Are you kidding? I love hanging out with you, you know that. I mean, Matt’s great, but when we get drunk together we’ve never braided each other’s hair like we did that one time.”

Karen laughed at the image. “I’m sure that’s just because his hair’s too short.”

“You’re probably right, because you’re always right, and that is why you are awesome,” Foggy said. “I’d offer to get drunk now, but it’s probably too early, plus I have exactly two beers in the refrigerator, so coffee?”

She smiled. “Sure.” She could hardly believe how much better he seemed. He walked around with so much more confidence, he was smiling, there was no hint of the tears she had seen on her last visit. It was good to see, encouraging. She wondered whether he had had some good news or a surprise improvement. She didn’t ask, just in case. “I thought you hated my coffee though,” she said.

Foggy waved her off with a shake of his head. “I do, it’s disgusting. No offense. I’m going to make it.”

She followed him into the kitchen and watched intently as he worked carefully, apparently entirely by touch. It was obvious from the way he searched for the things he needed with his fingers rather than his eyes that he still wasn’t seeing much at all. She bit her lip and tried not to stare.

“So, you’ve obviously learned a thing or two the last few days,” she said.

He didn’t reply, all his concentration on the task at hand. He turned to her as he waited for the coffee to brew. “Yeah, I’ve learned a few things,” he said. “How to make coffee, how to chase food around a plate with a fork and keep some of it off the table. A few months and I’ll have a few of the skills of the average six year old. Well, a six year old that can make coffee.” He sighed appeared to chase away the mood. When he smiled again it looked completely genuine. “Sorry. Yeah, I’m picking up a few skills. It’s good.”

Karen tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “You okay?” she asked.

He shrugged. “As well as you’d expect,” he told her.

In fact, he seemed so much better than she had expected. “You’re doing amazing,” she said.

“Says you.” He sighed, then turned around so that he was facing away from her. “I had a lesson this morning,” he said. “Uh, you know… blindness 101…”

Karen frowned, unsure for a moment exactly what he meant. “What?” she blurted.

Still facing away from her, not doing anything, just as though he didn’t want her to see his face. “Orientation and mobility, they call it. This woman came round and started to teach me stuff. You know, stuff I’m going to need, to…”

“Right,” Karen said. She got it now. She wished Foggy would turn around so that she could see him and get a better idea of how he was coping with that particular development.

“It wasn’t that bad,” he said. “I mean, I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t exactly that. Is this done?” He indicated the pot with a wave of his hand.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Karen bit her lip as she watched him open a drawer, reach inside and search around for a few seconds before pulling out a small device, a plastic box attached to two metal hooks. He slipped the hooks over the edge of a coffee mug and carefully began to pour the hot liquid. He poured slowly, the spout of the coffee pot touching the edge of the cup to ensure the coffee was actually going where he wanted it to. When the coffee hit the two prongs of the device that were inside the cup, it began to make a sound. Foggy stopped, took the device off the cup and slid it in her direction.

Karen grinned. “That’s pretty cool. Did the teacher show you that?”

Foggy shook his head. “No, she doesn’t do this stuff. That was all about not bumping into things. This is all Matt. He says he’s not a teacher, but he’s not as bad at it as he thinks.”

Karen took a sip of the coffee and watched as Foggy poured a second cup, added a careful dribble of milk and two spoonfuls of sugar.

“Oh,” she said. “How come I’ve never seen Matt using one of these?”

Foggy shrugged. Super hearing, probably. “I guess maybe he’s being doing it long enough that he knows how long he needs to pour for, or… I don’t know. How often have you heard him offer to make a drink?”

“Good point.” Karen smiled. “You want me to carry yours over to the couch?”

Foggy hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Sure, that’d be good, thanks.”

“So,” Karen picked up the other cup and walked through into the main part of the apartment. She placed both cups on the coffee table and sat down. Foggy followed her only a little more slowly. Again, she couldn’t help but notice the lack of the hesitancy in his steps that had been there the last time she had seen him. “By ‘not bumping into things’ do you mean you were using a cane?”

Foggy didn’t answer instantly. He grimaced, then shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

Karen took a sip of her coffee, and she didn’t know what it was that Foggy did differently to her, but he was right, his was better. “So, what’s that like?”

“Nerve wracking.” He laughed nervously. “And not as easy as Matt makes it look. I mean, he used to let me have a go in college sometimes when we were drunk or whatever, but guess what? It’s nothing like the same as that. At all. Plus, I have my own one now, which is incredibly weird.”

As Foggy spoke, he rubbed his right hand with his left and flexed his fingers.

“I’m under instructions to practice all the time. It kinda hurt my wrist, she kept adjusting the way I was holding it. Apparently my technique sucks, but she says that’s normal at first.”

“So,” Karen took another sip of her coffee and put the cup down. She took a deep breath and licked her lips. “So, if you’re learning this stuff, does that mean…” she allowed the words to tail off, finding herself not quite able to finish the question.

Foggy shook his head. “It doesn’t mean anything.” He sighed. “Or maybe it does… I still don’t know what’s going to happen. It just seems…” he stopped. His bottom lip slipped between his teeth and he bit down hard on it. Karen held her breath and prayed that he wouldn’t cry again. She didn’t want to be the one that did that to him.

“It’s okay,” she said. “If you don’t want to talk about it.”

“It seems sensible to plan for the worst. It doesn’t mean it won’t get better. It just means… I guess it just means… I guess I’m working on the assumption that…”

Karen reached across and touched him lightly on his shoulder. He flinched, just slightly, at the unexpected contact and she drew back. “That you’re not going to be able to see again,” she finished for him.

Foggy’s lips twitched into an approximation of a smile. It was forced, she could tell even with the dark glasses obscuring his eyes. She had never seen him fake a smile before. She had never seen him fake anything; Foggy Nelson was the most genuine person she knew. That he felt he had to pretend in front of her hurt. She squashed the feeling down, she’d probably be doing the exact same thing, and her feelings were not the most important thing happening here. Not by a long shot.

“Sorry,” he said. He had been saying that a lot recently. Too much. “I’m trying. I’m really trying.”

“So you still don’t know,” she said. “They still haven’t told you. Jesus.” That seemed like the cruelest thing about it, the uncertainty, the inability to know, one way or another. Even if it was bad news, if he could know then he could deal with it properly, move on, start accepting. As it was he was trapped in the middle, not daring to believe he was going to get better in case he didn’t but still with hope that he would, hope that would be shattered if he got bad news.

“They’ve given me the odds,” he said. “They’re in my favor. Barely. The thing is, as much as I know learning all this stuff is the right thing to do, if I actually let myself believe for more than a few seconds that this is permanent, I’m going to find myself curled up in the fetal position crying, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to get up again.”

Karen had no idea what to say to that. She reached out to touch him again, hesitated remembering his flinch then did it anyway. He didn’t flinch this time. He barely reacted at all. He leaned forward, stress etched onto his face.

“Foggy…”

“Shit. Sorry. That was a horrible thing to say. Imply my best friends life is so awful it’d send me into a spiraling depression, I didn’t mean it like that. Yep, foot in mouth Nelson strikes again. Ignore me. If it’s, you know, permanent, I’ll deal. Eventually. It’d take a while, a really long while, but, yeah.”

Karen chewed hard on her bottom lip, teasing at a piece of skin, trying frantically to think of something to say.

“Don’t repeat that to Matt, he won’t take offense, even though he should, he’ll just worry and he’s got enough going on right now.”

“I won’t,” she promised. 

He smiled again. It looked almost genuine this time. It wasn’t, but it could have passed with someone who didn’t know him as well as she did. “Thanks. I’m okay, really. I know it doesn’t look like it, but I am. I will be.”

Karen edged closer until the side of her body touched his. He relaxed into the contact, leaned against her slightly.

“I guess, at least you’re not totally blind, right? I mean, you can see colors and shapes and stuff, right. I know it probably doesn’t feel very useful right now, but you can see _something_. Not like Matt?”

Foggy smiled. It looked strange, like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. Karen instantly regretted her words but wasn’t sure why.

“No, not like Matt,” Foggy told her. “Nothing at all like him. Hey, do me a favor?”

“Sure,” Karen told him.

“Be honest. On a scale of zero to Matt, how terrible do these hospital issue glasses look?”

Karen chewed her lip, caught between a flattering exaggeration and the truth. She opted for the truth. “Well, not great? I’d say a three. I can buy you some new ones if you like? I bet we could even get away with writing it off as a business expense.”

He shook his head. “I have sunglasses. I’m not saying I look any better in them than I do in these, but I have them. These ones are better, apparently. Let less light through.”

“Yeah, they are dark,” Karen told him. “You can’t see your eyes through them at all.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Foggy said. “I don’t imagine they look great either.”

Probably not, but she couldn’t help being curious. “Want me to look at them for you, too?”

He shook his head quickly. “I don’t… Maybe another time when it’s less bright. The light sensitivity is fading, but not quickly enough for my liking.”

“Has Matt told you he’s investigating the bombing?” Karen asked.

Foggy paused with his drink half way to his lips, turned to face her, then away again almost as quickly. “What?” he asked.

“He says he isn’t, but he totally is. I was wondering whether he’s told you anything about it, because I could use any information for my own investigation. Especially since he took everything I had to the cops.”

“Uh…” Foggy said. “What’s going on, did I slip into an alternate universe or something?”

“No, listen, the coffee guy, Macintyre, did he ever talk to you about his family? Maybe mention he son? He’s nineteen, same name as his dad.”

Foggy shook his head. “I bought coffee from him, I mean, I knew him to say hello, talk about the weather or whatever, but we never got into family stuff. Why?”

“Because I know the cops say Macintyre Senior didn’t do it, but I’m wondering whether they’ve looked into Junior. He’s bad news.”

Foggy leaned forward, suddenly interested. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning two possession arrests, a lot of photos on Facebook of him with some people I know for a fact are dealers, and a couple of weird cryptic messages for anyone to read on his timeline that I think sound kinda threatening. I thought maybe he planted the bomb so his dad’s insurance could pay off his drug debts, but Matt seems to think there’s an old man involved somehow.”

“Wait.” Foggy waved a hand in the air as though to silence her and erase some of the words. “Wait. Karen, _how_ do you know these guys are dealers?”

Karen smiled. The sudden panic and concern in his voice was quite touching. “Relax,” she told him. “I’m not a customer. I remember their pictures from the paper one time, I just have a good memory for things like that.” She laughed. “I promise I’m not using drugs.”

“Okay,” Foggy said. He didn’t look entirely happy. “Well, being arrested for possession and hanging out with dealers doesn’t make the kid a dealer himself with a huge debt to pay to some underworld mobster. It just makes him stupid.”

“I know,” Karen said. “That’s why I need to keep looking into it…” she broke off at the sound of a knock on the door.

“Me,” Matt announced.

Foggy sighed, leaned his head back against the top of the sofa as though he were shouting up at the ceiling. “I gave you that key for a reason, Murdock. I can’t be bothered getting up right now.”

A few seconds delay while Matt presumably got out and used the key, and the door opened. Matt stepped through and rested his cane by the door. “Hey Karen, I didn’t expect you here.”

She opened her mouth, surprised at being noticed, then closed it again. “Nothing to do at the office,” she said. She turned to Foggy, “Do they teach you how to do _that_ in these lessons you were telling me about?”

He smiled and shook his head and Karen watched, fascinated as his whole demeanor seemed to shift somehow as Matt walked into the room. She wondered whether the way he appeared to relax was genuine. She suspected it wasn’t. She wondered whether Matt realized.

“Nah, that’s his beautiful woman radar,” Foggy explained. “You know the one that helps him ID the most gorgeous woman in any room and latch onto her with the wounded puppy act? It’s related to that somehow, I just can’t figure it out yet. As soon as I do, there’ll be no stopping me.”

“Actually, I just recognized your perfume,” Matt told her. He smiled.

Karen rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. It was obvious now she thought about it. “Right.”

“Maybe you should wear something different just to confuse him.” Foggy suggested. “That’s what I’d do, now you know his secret.”

“That’s because you’re a horrible person, Foggy,” Matt told him.

Foggy grinned. “You love me really. There’s still coffee in the pot if you want any, buddy.”

Matt walked through to the kitchen and poured himself a cup. Karen watched the exchange, a little bemused. It wasn’t that different to their usual exchanges, but there was something else there this time. “What was that all about?”

Foggy shrugged. “Dorm room mentality. We haven’t spent this much time together since law school. Plus, I think I’m going a little stir crazy, I haven’t been out of the apartment in days except to go to the hospital and back. I guess we’re reverting. Stick around, you’ll enjoy the pranks.

“If you’re sick of being inside, we can go out.” Matt suggested. “It’s not like we’re snowed under with work right now, I could do with some air.”

Foggy shook his head. “FYI, there is some extreme head shaking going on over here,” he said. “I like my sofa, I’m comfortable here, and I know where everything is.”

“Well,” Karen said. She drained the last of her coffee and got to her feet. “As comfortable as it is, I’d better head back to work. Those phones aren’t going to answer themselves.”

“Yeah they will,” Foggy told her. “That’s what the answering machines from the mid nineties you got for us are for.”

“Still, I want you guys to at least feel like you’re paying me for doing a real job, or else you might stop. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

She got to her feet, leaned over and touched Foggy supportively on the arm by way of a see you later, then let herself out.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd just like to thanks everybody for their kind comments last chapter. The last few weeks have been pretty rough, but I'm writing again, which has to be good, right?
> 
> We buried my brother on Friday in a really nice natural burial ground not far from where we live. If anywhere is perfect for Mob, that is it, surrounded by nature because he loved the outdoors. The funeral was so big that not everybody could fit into the room, and the wake went on into the middle of the night. One of his friends is planning a memorial concert next month with local bands, most of whom were also his friends. People are getting tattoos, and planning to graffiti the city with his name. It's been very strange, but also nice in a way.
> 
> Anyway, I just wanted to thank you all for your support, here's another chapter.

As soon as Karen was gone, Foggy felt the couch dip again as Matt replaced her on the other side. He placed his coffee down on the table next to him. “You can’t hide in here forever,” he said. “Sooner or later you’re going to need to go outside.”

Foggy considered ignoring him, but thought better of it. He shrugged. “I know you can probably tell that I’m shrugging,” he replied. “It means I’m not interested in going out there and making an ass of myself in public.” He paused. “Well, you know, more than I do anyway on a daily basis. Also, I’m not hiding, I’m cowering. There’s a difference.”

“Not funny,” Matt told him.

Foggy shrugged again.

“How did the lesson go?” Matt asked.

Foggy thought about it. “Good, I think. It’s strange, all these years watching you, you’d think I’d have picked something up. I guess I wasn’t watching close enough while I had the chance, I actually thought I’d be good at it. No such luck.”

Matt laughed. “I think cane travel is more of a learn by doing activity. It gets easier, give it time and it’ll just be instinctive, you won’t even have to think about it.”

“Yeah, that’s what Ana said.”

“You know the lessons are going to take you outside eventually, don’t you? And when I say eventually, I don’t even mean months down the line. Maybe even your next class. You’re going to have to get over this staying indoors thing.”

Foggy sighed. “Yeah, I know. I will. I just need to work up to it.”

“Can I show you something?” Matt asked. He sounded apprehensive, uncertain.

Foggy turned to look at him and opened his eyes. Every time he did it, every single time, he was disappointed. It was as though in the time between glimpses of the world, his brain somehow altered his memory of his last attempt, made it better. He could barely make out Matt, sitting less than a foot away from him. The glare seemed to be getting better though. Or maybe he was just getting used to it. He closed his eyes again. “Depends where it is,” he said.

“It’s not a thing,” Matt explained. “I want to show you how to listen, how to build a picture of what’s going on around you using your other senses.”

Foggy frowned. “World on fire?”

“No, something else. You’ll get to this in your lessons anyway, but you might find it helpful now. To… maybe to show you that when you do have to do it, it’ll be okay.”

“I thought you said you’re not a teacher,” Foggy said.

Matt paused. “I’m not. I shouldn’t be. If you don’t want to, it’s okay. I don’t want to mess with the program too much, anyway. But… I just want to show you what you can do in here, then maybe how you can apply it to the rest of the world.”

Foggy sighed. “How to listen, huh?” He licked his lips and thought about it. He was reasonably sure that his ability to listen wasn’t the thing he was having trouble with. “Sure, what the hell?”

Matt got to his feet and walked into the center of the room. “Come over here,” he said.

Foggy followed him to some random point between the sofa and the door. Matt waited, completely silent.

“Matt?”

“Sorry. Just thinking of the best way to do this. Okay, so you need to be able to get a feel for the space you’re in without looking at it,” he fell into silence again.

“It’s not going to work, Matt,” Foggy said. “Whatever you come up with. I don’t have superpowers. I can’t compensate using my hearing and other senses the way you do.”

“You can. Anyone can. You don’t need to be able to hear what’s happening two buildings over,” Matt told him. “That’s mostly irrelevant anyway, I have to block it out, concentrate on what’s happening around me, and you can hear what’s happening in the same room as you just fine. I know you can’t hear as much as me, but you’ll get enough, if you know how to use it.”

Foggy took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Yeah, okay,” he said.

“Okay? Start by closing your eyes,” Matt told him.

“They already are,” Foggy said. “That’s kind of a permanent thing during the day right now. But why? Not like I can see much of anything anyway.”

“If your eyes are open the visual input will distract you. Just keep them closed, okay?

Foggy shrugged, “Yep, closed tight.”

“Okay,” Matt said. “Now listen to what’s going on around you. What can you hear?”

Foggy folded his arms across his chest and concentrated all of his attention on what he could hear. “TV in the apartment below,” he said. “They’re a couple in their seventies, I think their hearing must be going, because they always have it that little bit too loud.”

“Good,” Matt said, “but irrelevant. Filter it out, ignore it.”

That was easier said than done. He tried to concentrate on other sounds in the room. “The humming noise from the refrigerator. Traffic from outside.” He screwed his eyes tighter, as though that might help; it didn’t. “That’s about it right now.”

Matt began to walk toward him, he heard footsteps, shoes on the uncarpeted floor.

“You walking,” Foggy added.

“Where’s the traffic noise coming from?” Matt asked him.

Foggy resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Something’s telling me you don’t mean the street?”

A fist tapped playfully on his shoulder. “The window,” Matt told him. “It’s closed, but that’s the weak point, that’s how most of the sound from outside gets in. So, you know where the window and the refrigerator are. I’m going to turn you around a few times, okay?”

“Um,” Foggy laughed nervously. “Why do I feel like I’m playing a kids party game?”

Matt ignored the question, placed one hand on each of Foggy’s shoulders and turned him around maybe five times. He let go and Foggy almost stumbled. He managed to keep himself upright, and resisted the urge to open his eyes.

“Which direction are you facing?” Matt asked him. “If you walked forward right now, what would you reach first?”

Foggy listened. The TV downstairs was playing the theme tune to Cheers. The sound of the traffic and the refrigerator appeared to be coming from all around him. In the apartment upstairs, someone walked across the room in what sounded like high heels.

He concentrated first on the sound from the window, it appeared to be coming from his left, which made sense because now he thought about it the refrigerator was behind him, which meant that he was facing in the approximate direction of, “The front door?”

“Don’t ask me,” Matt told him. “Go and find out for yourself.”

Foggy took a hesitant step forward. He had become used to navigating his apartment without vision, but that was from one point to another. He had been standing in the centre of the room with no real idea how many steps there were between him and his target, and that was only if he was right about what was in front of him. He took another step, and another, one arm slightly outstretched, forearm across his body to protect against bumps. Another step. His hand touched the painted wood of the front door. His fingertips brushed over the surface, and knowing where he was allowed the room to fall into place again. “Door,” he confirmed.

“Of course, that was easier because you know the space so well, and you already knew pretty much where you were in relation to everything in the room, but you can use the same technique anywhere, to help you build up a picture of your surroundings. It’s not just sound either, you can use your sense of smell to help you find a bakery, or a coffee shop. You can feel differences in types of ground surfaces through the soles of your shoes, you can tell whether you’re on an incline or a flat surface. It’s not just swinging a cane around and hoping for the best.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Foggy told him.

“Want to try something else?” Matt asked.

Foggy shrugged. “Maybe,” he said, “but actually there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about.”

“Oh?”

Foggy heard Matt sit down on the sofa. He stayed where he was, by the door, eyes closed, listening to the world around him. He could do this. In here, at least, he could do this. Other places too, once he learned the layout. What scared him was the outside; buildings, people, cars, an endless grid of streets, each one exactly the same for him to get lost in.

Matt waited patiently, not prompting him to continue the thought. Foggy raised a hand and touched the lower half of his face. A week of stubble felt rough to the touch.

“Okay, so this is kind of ridiculous,” he said. He paused, giving Matt time to respond. He didn’t. He adjusted his position on the sofa slightly and waited. Foggy sighed. “Matt, I don’t look good with a beard. I mean, I seriously don’t. It grows all patchy and hilarious, and I can feel it there already, so…”

“Right, okay,” Matt said, Foggy thought he could hear a suppressed laugh in his friend’s voice, and although he was fairly sure that should make him feel worse, it actually didn’t. If Matt could laugh at him, that had to be a step in the right direction, right?

“Oh, sure. Laugh it up.” Foggy couldn’t help but smile in response. He had said it first, it was ridiculous. “It’s hilarious to have to re-learn something I mastered when I was thirteen.” He paused, “Okay, fifteen. I have to say, this is not one of the issues I envisioned when I thought about what I’d need to know. I was thinking more about how not to get hit by a bus, or…” he tailed off. “Look, just, any advice?”

“I’m not laughing at you,” Matt told him. “Well, I am, but it’s because I’m remembering the time you tried to grow a beard in law school.”

It had been terrible. He couldn’t believe he had actually left the room looking like that. One of the downsides to rooming with a blind guy was that he couldn’t tell you when you were making a fool of yourself with the worse beard the world had ever seen. “Oh, God, yes. I actually thought I could get away with it too, and then I went on that date…”

Matt wasn’t even trying to disguise his laughter now. “Probably the first time someone has come back from a date and then started grooming.”

“Yeah, well I vowed that night to shave every day for the rest of my life. I might have failed there, but it’s time to put it right. I can’t risk it getting any worse and Karen seeing the… What was it that girl said?”

“Mangey bear,” Matt told him. He was grinning again, Foggy could tell by the sound of his voice. “Yeah, we probably don’t want to unleash that on anyone. Okay,” he sat upright, all business suddenly. “It’s not as difficult as you might think. Modern razors are pretty great, it’s much less easy to cut yourself. The key is just to remember where you’ve done and not end up going over the same spot again. Check afterwards with your fingers to see if you missed anything. I work left to right just because that’s how I learned. I can do it for you if you like?”

Foggy shook his head. “Nah, I’ll need to do it myself eventually anyway. Better I master it now, because sooner or later either you or my mobility teacher is going to make me go outside and I’d rather not have the added problem of looking like I let a toddler shave my face.” He paused. “Besides, frankly, letting you do it would be a shade too weird even for us.”

Matt laughed. Foggy imagined the way he looked when he smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling in mirth. He wondered whether Matt was wearing his glasses right now or whether he had taken them off. He wondered what he was wearing, whether he had let his own facial hair grow out a little again as he did from time to time, or whether he was clean shaven. None of it was important, but he just wanted to know. He wanted to know without having to be told.

“I hate this,” he said. “I mean, I know you know how much this sucks, but I mean I really, _really_ hate this.”

“I know,” Matt said softly. He walked back across the room and sat in one of the armchairs. Foggy squinted across at him and thought he could just about make out the shape of him against the chair. Then again, that could have been his imagination.

He followed him back across the room and slumped into another chair. “Will this ever seem normal?” he asked.

A creak as Matt adjusted his position, no response.

“Not being able to see, I mean. Will I wake up one day and just get on with it, not even think about it? Will that ever happen?”

“I… don’t know.”

Foggy’s squint deepened and he felt the strain as his eyes struggled to focus on something they could not. “You do know,” he said.

Matt sighed. “You’re a lot older than I was, not to mention a completely different person. I don’t know how it works. Anyway, you’re probably going to…”

“No. Working on the assumption that I won’t get better. Worst case scenario.”

“Okay.” Matt took a deep breath. “Yeah. Based on my on experience only, eventually it’ll just start to feel okay. It’s not a sudden change where you wake up one day and don’t mind, but gradually you’ll adjust and yes, one day it’ll just be normal.”

Foggy closed his eyes, blocking out the blurred and useless image before them. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I was afraid of.”


	16. Chapter 16

Karen stared into the compact mirror she kept in her purse, carefully scrutinizing her appearance. She raised a hand to her face and rubbed at her eyes until the makeup smudged, just slightly, like maybe she had slept in it, or possibly not slept at all. She looked as tired as she felt. That was probably a good thing, she could use it. She dipped her fingers into a pot of hair wax and applied a liberal amount to her roots until her hair looked greasy and unwashed, then wiped the remainder on the sleeve of her old hoodie.

She pulled the hood up over her head as left the office and aimed her gaze at the tips of her toes as she walked. It wasn’t far to walk, she resisted the urge to hail a taxi and instead used the time to get into character, the life she was imagining wasn’t so far removed from the one that she might have had, if she had made a couple of different decisions. She hitched her skirt a little higher and introduced a slight stagger to her walk as she neared her destination.

A kid barely in his teens, sitting on a wall outside the run-down apartment building watched her with interest, one eye on her, the other on his phone as he sent a message. She ignored him and squashed down the uncomfortable crawling sensation of his eyes on her back. Almost of its own accord, her hand reached into her pocket and the fingers closed around the comforting shape of the bottle of mace she kept there. She gripped it tightly, index finger on the button, ready.

She found the person she was looking for lounging with a friend outside the entrance to the building where he lived. She smiled as she sidled up to him.

The kid glared at her, openly hostile.

“Hey,” she said. “A friend of mine tells me you might have something I’m looking to buy.”

***

From the roof of a neighboring building, Matt crouched, ready to leap down as he listened to the scene below. A minute earlier, he had been about to make his move, now he was forced to wait and listen. He readied himself to get down to street level quickly if he needed to. The next building over was a little lower than this one, he could jump across, and from there it wouldn’t be difficult to access the fire escape and then leap onto the roof of a truck parked not far away. He could do it in five seconds, if he needed to. He crept a little closer to the edge, careful to leave enough room to run before he leapt.

He needed to talk to Karen about deliberately putting herself in danger like this. Only, it would be difficult to do without revealing how he knew about it. One day soon, they were going to have to have the talk. He just hoped it would go better than it had with Foggy.

He listened to Karen’s clumsy attempt at buying drugs and wondered whether her nerves would be as obvious to someone who couldn’t hear her heartbeat, or someone who didn’t know her as well as he did. He hoped not. Muscles tensed, ready. Neither of the kids had a gun, he knew that much even from this distance, but that didn’t mean they weren’t armed with other weapons.

The deal went down quickly, then Karen hesitated. He heard her heart skip a beat and her breathing quicken as she tried to work up the nerve to say something else. “So, do you…”

“What you waiting for, bitch?” the other kid interrupted before she could say what she wanted to say. He pulled a switchblade from his pocket and pressed the button, it sprung open with a metallic sound and Matt tensed further, ready to intervene. “Get the hell out of here or you’ll regret it.”

Whatever it was she had been planning, Karen lost her nerve. She turned and walked quickly down the street. She didn’t run, she was smarter than that. Matt waited, relaxing only slightly as he followed her with his ears until he was certain that she was a safe distance away, then turned his attention back to the two kids.

The friend laughed to himself as he put the knife away.

“What the hell were you thinking?” David Jr said to his friend. “You know I’ve got to get rid of a quarter pound of this shit by the end of the month. How am I supposed to do that if you keep threatening the customers. She’s never coming back.”

“She was never coming back anyway,” the friend said. “She’s no junkie, she was here checking us out.”

Junior was suddenly stricken with panic. His heart rate and respiration increased sharply as he scanned the street for anyone who might be watching them. “Cop?” he said.

The friend laughed. “Undercover cops don’t look so nervous. Nah, she was one of Kostya’s, come to check up on us, make sure we’re doing what we’re supposed to.”

“Then why’d she be scared?”

The friend laughed again. It sounded hollow and bitter. “You know what he does to people that piss him off.”

***

Karen waited until she was two blocks away before she gave in to the urge to run. Almost tripping over her own heels, heart pounding and limbs shaking, she sped through the night, knowing full well how she must look and not caring one bit. She rounded the final corner and let herself in the front door of her apartment building.

Her hands trembled so badly that she could barely insert the key into the lock of her apartment. When she finally did, she slipped inside, slammed and locked the door behind her and stood with her back to it, shaking from head to foot. She thrust a hand into her pocket, fished out the little bag and stared at it for several minutes. There were no identifying marks, nothing that would be of any use to anybody. She was $20 down and the proud owner of a bag of poison and none of the information she had been looking for. Okay, she now knew the kid was dealing, but she had been almost certain of that already. She kicked off her shoes before she walked into the bathroom, emptied the packet into the toilet, dropped the bag in after it, and flushed.

Back in the kitchen, she opened the refrigerator door, took out a beer and downed it without stopping to take a breath. There was nothing stronger in the house, she cursed herself for her lack of foresight there. She opened another bottle and sat down heavily at the kitchen table. She closed her eyes, trying not to think, and saw the knife in the kid’s hand, the threat in his eyes; she remembered another man, a gun on a table and then in her own hand. She remembered blood soaking into a white shirt from the bullet holes in his chest.

She finished the beer and stood up to get another. Matt had been right, she should have stopped looking into this.

***

He had miscalculated the time it would take him to reach the ground. In fact, it was closer to four seconds than five. Sloppy. A second’s miscalculation, even when it meant he was faster than he anticipated, could mean disaster in a fight. Luckily, this wasn’t a fight, it was an ambush.

He leapt from the top of the truck and landed deftly in front of the two kids. They barely had the opportunity to register their surprise when he reached out with both hands and landed two simultaneous and almost identical punches.

They both went down, not unconscious, but dazed. Matt grabbed Junior by the front of his t-shirt and the friend by the arm and dragged them around the corner into the alley before they had the opportunity to say anything.

He threw them both to the ground. “It’s your lucky day,” he said. “I overheard you talking just now, so you’ve already told me who I’m looking for. That means you only have to answer one question. Where do I find this Kostya?”

The friend lunged at him, hand reaching into his pocket as he did. Matt heard the sound of his switchblade opening again. The friend swiped his weapon through the air. Matt dodged, avoided the sharp edge of the blade and grabbed the kid’s hand. Skilled fingers found the correct pressure points and he pushed hard. The blade dropped from the boy’s fingers as he lost the feeling in his hand.

“What the fuck?” he cried, stopping his attack, momentarily confused. The feeling would return in a few minutes. Matt took advantage of the opportunity to knock him to the ground with a kick to the chest. He fell hard, shoulder smashing against a brick wall before slumping to the ground. Nothing was broken, but he wouldn’t be feeling too good for the next week or so. “The fuck you do to my hand?” he whispered, winded by the force of the fall. He gasped for breath.

David Macintyre Jr was on the ground among the garbage blown into the alley from the street. He scrabbled backwards, closer to the dead end wall. Matt took a step closer. “Stop,” he said.

He stopped as though frozen in place by the sound of his voice. He whimpered. “Tell him I’m working on it!” he said. “It’s just going to take some time. The cops are investigating my dad, the insurance won’t pay out if they think he did it himself.”

Matt reached down to the ground and dragged the kid to his feet by the neck of his t-shirt. Everything clicked into place. “Your father planted the bomb,” he said. Macintyre had been lying when they had spoken, and somehow Matt had not realized it. His fist clenched in anger, bunching the kid’s shirt around his neck and pulling him closer.

“No! He doesn’t even know about my arrangement with you guys,” David Jr cried. “It was just dumb luck that bomb went off when it did.” He struggled to free himself.

Matt tightened his grip. “Luck?” Foggy was hurt, maybe permanently, and the kid said it was luck?

“Yeah, I thought I was dead, now all I have to do is get the cash. But Kostya’s gonna have to be patient. Tell him he’ll get his money soon as my dad gets paid. Don’t worry, my mom’ll make sure he lets me have it!”

The kid was pathetic. Relying on his parents to bail him out of the shit hole he had dug himself into. He genuinely did seem to think the bombing had been a coincidence. Matt didn’t believe in co-incidence.

He released his grip on Junior’s t-shirt and he collapsed into a panting, trembling heap on the ground. “I don’t work for this Kostya,” Matt told him, speaking with his voice so low that it was almost a growl. “Where do I find him?”

“I don’t know,” the kid said. He covered his face with his hands and curled into a ball on the floor. “I don’t know, I don’t know.” Shit. He wasn’t lying.

“You must know someone who knows him,” Matt said. “You owe him money, how else are you supposed to…” he turned to the other kid, still cradling his hand. His breathing had grown more steady now. “You,” he said.

“Hey!” a voice at the end of the alley interrupted him, female, elderly. He heard the sound of a walking stick on the ground, breath wheezing slightly with the exertion of walking, or possibly fear at the masked man in the alley. “Get away from those kids,” she yelled. “I called the police, they’re on the way!” She was waving something in the air. It wasn’t a weapon. More likely the phone she had used to call the cops.

In the distance, he could hear the wail of approaching sirens. They weren’t necessarily heading to him, there were so many sirens in the city at night, but it wasn’t impossible. The old woman stood her ground at the end of the alley as though she would be able to block his exit. The sirens moved a little closer.

“This isn’t the end,” Matt warned the two kids. He scaled the building, leaping from conveniently placed dumpsters to the fire escape, and ran across the roof to escape the area. As he did, he heard the kids scrabble to their feet and run from the alley into the apartment building, carrying their drugs with them. He should have confiscated them. If he’d had the chance, he would have.

“You’re welcome, you ungrateful little criminals,” the old lady screamed after them. The sirens continued past the scene, now too far to the south to be heading his way. Most likely she really had called the police, but they wouldn't be in a rush to respond to a call about a couple of dealers being hassled.

From his position back on the roof again, he listened to the interior of the building. It wasn’t excessively large, but there were over a hundred people inside the forty or so apartments. A hundred people living their lives, conversations about work, school, family, love, tragedy. Arguments; the end of a relationship as one man packed a bag and walked out of the door, the possible beginning of another as two young men feel into bed together. Matt concentrated on slowing his breathing and and one by one, filtered out everything that was irrelevant until he could hear nothing but the two young dealers. 

“…fuck he did to my hand. Did you see it? Still can’t move the fingers properly. If this doesn’t get better…”

“Shut up about your hand.” A door opened and they walked into one of the apartments. “If that guy’s not working for Kostya, I just went and told him a whole load of shit that I shouldn’t have.”

“Of course he’s not working for the old man. He’s that vigilante from the papers. Don’t you read?”

“Shit.” There was a bang as David Junior hit something, probably a wall. “I’m so dead. What do I do?”

“Nothing,” the other kid said. “Just keep a low profile, make sure word doesn’t get out about this or we’re both finished. And talk to your mom, she’s usually full of ideas.”

The TV was switched on and the conversation faded into silence.

“Shit. My hand feels weird,” the friend said.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long break between chapters. I'll try to do better next time!

He knew it was stupid and irrational. He knew that he was with someone who was trained to keep him safe and instruct him in how to do the same for himself. He still found himself hesitating at the door to his apartment.

Matt was out, at Foggy’s request. That had been irrational too, and pathetic, and he was almost certain that Matt would agree with him about that, but he couldn’t stand the thought of his best friend listening in on the lessons.

“Ready?” Anastasia, his teacher, stood just behind him, waiting.

Foggy swallowed and licked his lips. “I didn’t think we’d be doing this yet,” he confessed. “Matt said…” he tailed off. Matt had never said anything specific about the order the lesson might take.

“The way I run my lessons varies from student to student depending on their strengths and weaknesses,” she said. “It’s not like following a recipe, everyone’s different. But generally, I like to get out of the house as soon as possible. Getting into a space you don’t know so well lets you experience using your cane somewhere where you don’t know exactly what to expect. It’s important to be confident at that. After all, that’s what it’s for.”

Foggy nodded. “Based on strengths and weaknesses?” he said. “So, out of interest, what are mine?”

Ana mulled over the question with a humming sound. “Strengths? You’re unusually confident at some things, things around the house for example. You’re organized, you know where everything is and make sure you put it back there, so you don’t have too much difficulty finding things. That’s good. Also, I wouldn’t normally expect a person who has been without vision for a week to be so confident making hot drinks, for example.”   
“That’s Matt,” Foggy told her. “I mean, because of him. I’ve been watching how he does things for years. I never thought I’d have to know how to do it myself, but seeing things done a million times is pretty useful.”

“Weaknesses though, your cane technique still needs work,” she continued, “but like I told you, that’s normal. It’ll come with time, you just need to keep practicing and stop getting frustrated when I correct you. You need to form good habits from the start, it’s a lot easier to do that than to form bad ones and have to break them later.”

Foggy puffed out air from between pursed lips and nodded. “Why don’t we go back to the things I’m good at,” he suggested.

Ana laughed and placed her hand over his on the handle of the cane. She angled it correctly, adjusted his fingers into a better position and began to move it with him, hand steady, wrist moving. “You’re also very good at delaying tactics,” she told him.

“Well, I am a defense attorney, they practically teach a class on that at law school.”

“Then I’m sure you graduated at the top of your class. Okay, I’m going to let go of your hand, keep moving in exactly the same way, okay?”

“‘Kay.” Ana let go and Foggy continued to move the cane from side to side in a low arc before his feet, tapping the floor at each side.

“So, whenever you’re ready, step outside.”

He hesitated again, hand still moving the cane pointlessly from side to side.

“It’s okay, Foggy. I’ve been doing this for years, I’m not going to let anything happen to you. We’re just going to walk around the hall for a bit to give you some more practice. If it goes well, we’ll think about the elevator, or maybe even the stairs, but I’m not going to take you out into the street today. The first time we do that, we’ll spend the whole lesson out there, start thinking about orienting using different sounds, surfaces you’ll encounter with your cane and how to tell the difference… lots of different things you’ll find really useful.”

Foggy smiled nervously. “Okay, just promise me you’re not going to let me fall down an elevator shaft or something.”

“I can honestly say that not one of my students has ever fallen down an elevator shaft on my watch.”

“Stairs?”

She laughed. “Okay, walk forwards, visualize the space outside your door. Remember, left foot forward means…”   
“Cane goes to the right,” Foggy finished for her. “Yeah, I got it. Okay, here goes.” He took a deep breath and stepped through the door into the hall beyond. “I can’t help but notice the suspicious lack of an answer about the stairs,” he said.

***

Karen flicked through the stack of mail quickly, checking for anything that might be important first. Most of the mail they received was junk, most of that was addressed to the previous tenant. She had toyed briefly with the idea of sending it back with not at this address written on the envelope, but it seemed like too much of an effort when the wastepaper bin was right there by her desk.

She dropped four unopened envelopes into the trash, then began to open the remaining few. An electricity bill that she filed away to deal with later, two identical advertisements, one addressed to Matt and one to Foggy providing details of cheap deals on rental cars for businesses. She filed them in the trash. The final letter looked more interesting.

A brown paper envelope, no window in the front, but the address printed onto a label and stuck onto the front. The sticky label had been slightly askew in the printer, resulting in the text sitting at a slight angle on the label. The sender had trimmed the edge in an attempt to make it look less obvious. The stamp was stuck on rather than printed. It looked like a personal letter masquerading as one from a company.

Karen stuck a finger under the fold down flap at the back and slid it across to open the envelope.

“Karen.”

Karen jumped in surprise as she looked up to see Matt standing in the doorway. “Oh, sorry. You scared me,” she told him. “I’d forgotten you were here. How do you move so quietly?”

He gave her a weak smile as he walked through the door of his office and sat down on the spare folding chair next to her desk. “Years of practice,” he told her.

“Are you okay? You want a coffee, or…”

Matt shook his head. “We need to talk,” he told her.

Karen fought to quell the surge of panic at his words. She put down the letter and gave him her undivided attention. “Okay. Just, don’t fire me, okay? I know business has been a little slow lately, and all the stuff with Foggy, but he’s going to get better, I know it, and the firm is going to be really successful. Just give it time.”

“I’m not going to fire you,” Matt told her.

Karen smiled in relief. “No? Okay, that’s good.”

“Its about last night,” Matt said. “I know what you were doing.”

“Oh.” Suddenly, she didn’t know what to say, she had done several things last night, but she had a good idea which one Matt was talking about. “Uh,” she licked her lips. “How?”

“That’s not important.”

She nodded, her lips tightened into a smile prompted entirely by stress. “Okay, no. I guess not.” It was, of course, because if somebody had seen her and reported back to Matt, that was very bad. “Listen, Matt. I don’t know what you think, but I wasn’t buying them to use, I just thought I could get some information. I flushed it as soon as I got home, I swear.”

Matt waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t think you’re using drugs, Karen. I do think you’re taking unnecessary risks. You said you were going to leave this alone.”

In fact, although he had told her to stop investigating, she didn’t remember actually saying that she would. Despite that, she nodded. “Don’t worry, I’m done now,” she said. “I didn’t learn anything and I don’t think there’s any point trying again.”

“Good,” Matt told her. “But there is one thing I’d like you to do for me, if you don’t mind. And before you say anything, I do remember what I said the other day. I have a… source. Someone who thinks they know who set off the bomb. I need you to look into someone called Kostya. I don’t know if it’s a first or last name, or if it’s really his name at all, but that’s all I have.”

“Kostya,” Karen repeated, listening to the sound of the name, mulling over whether it was one she had heard before.

“But Karen,” Matt added. “Be discreet. Don’t take risks, and if you get the urge to go talking to any more dealers, don’t. Come to me instead, okay?”

Karen swallowed. “Okay,” she promised him.

Matt got to his feet and walked back into his office, closing the door behind him.

“Kostya,” Karen repeated to herself. She opened her laptop again and typed the name into Google.

***

“Michelle told me how you got our number,” Ana said as she headed for the door.

Foggy frowned as he tried to match a face, or at least a memory, to the name and came up blank. “Michelle…” he repeated.

“From the reception desk.”

“Oh,” he smiled. “Yeah, she seemed nice. She was very impressed. I was impressed with myself, to be honest. I really didn’t think I had that number right. And your name is far too long, by the way, do you know how long it took me to work it out? Anastasia Thompson?”

Ana laughed. Foggy heard the zipper opening on her bag and the sound of something being pulled out. “Sorry,” she said. “You’ll have to speak to my parents if you want to complain about that.”

Foggy shook his head. “No complaints, it’s a nice name. And at least you can shorten it to something that doesn’t sound awful. My real name is Franklin, and who wants to be called Frank when they’re not a seventy year old retiree? But then, as Matt said back in law school, is anyone going to take a lawyer seriously with a name like Foggy? It’s a dilemma. I decided I didn’t care, I’ll wow them with my legal prowess and by the time I’m done they won’t even care that I go by a nickname my sister gave me when I was six.”

“That’s a good strategy,” Ana told him. He could tell that she was smiling by her voice. His eyes provided him a darkish shape against the white of the apartment’s walls. He wondered whether it was his imagination, or whether the image was a little sharper than it had been the day before. “Have you thought about trying to improve your Braille comprehension?” she asked.

He had. To the point where he had been seeking out Braille wherever he could find it; Matt’s legal notes, the reading book Matt had brought with him, the sides of medicine bottles and pill boxes, trying to puzzle out what certain words said, with varying degrees of success and a hell of a lot of frustration. He refused to be illiterate for any longer than he had to be. “You can’t exactly be a lawyer if you can’t read,” he said. He was going for a casual tone, but the words came out much more tense than he had intended.

“I brought you this,” Ana told him. She touched his hand with her own, then brushed his fingers with several thick sheets of paper. He took them from her. “The one on the top is the alphabet,” she said, then a few of the more common words and sets of letters expressed as one symbol with the word spelled out next to it. You know; TH, SH, and, the, with, that kind of thing. The one underneath is just a list of random words for you to practice with.”

Foggy touched the top sheet of paper and felt the letters that were slowly becoming familiar to him. He smiled. “Wow, thanks, that’s… thanks.”

“When you’re ready for more, let me know and I’ll set up a meeting for you at the centre with a friend of mine who specializes in teaching Braille to adults. Or I can do that now, if you’d prefer.”

Foggy hesitated. He had an appointment with the ophthalmologist next week. Reading was important, but he was still holding out for good news, and possibly even an idea of timescales. He had plenty on the sheet Ana had given him, along with the various things around his home to keep him occupied for now and start to grow more used to reading with his fingers.

“This’ll do fine for now,” he told her. “I’ve always been more of a study out of class guy anyway, but maybe soon, that’d be good.”

Ana touched his arm lightly with her hand, then unfolded her own cane, ready to leave. “Talking of studying out of class, keep practicing with the cane,” she told him. “I’ll be able to tell if you don’t.”

Foggy put the sheets of paper down on the table next to the couch and walked her to the door. He opened the door to let her out and listened to her leave. The elevator door opened as he began to close his door, and mumbled conversation indicated someone getting out as she got in.

Within seconds of him closing the door, he heard a gentle tap on the other side. He hesitated for a moment, tempted to ask the person to identify themselves. It was probably Ana, most likely she had left something behind that she needed. He unlocked the door and opened it again.

“Oh, Foggy…” A hand touched his face.

Foggy tried not to flinch at the unexpected touch, he managed to refrain from groaning. He stepped back to allow entry into the apartment. “Hi Mom, how’s it going?”

“Stop it. He’s not a child.” That was his dad. Foggy tried to put on a smile as he closed the door behind them.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, first off and apology. It has been almost six months since I updated. Sorry! I have a laundry list of excuses, but what it boils down to mostly is I've not been writing very much recently. But I have been chipping away at this, slowly but surely, and I have a plan and a whole bunch of notes. I'm going to finish it, I promise.
> 
> So, by way of an apology, here's a really short chapter. More to follow shortly, I promise.

Matt paused outside Foggy’s door, catching a slightly familiar scent on the air. He inhaled gently through his nose, breathing in the perfume until he could place it. It mingled strangely with the unexpected odor of orange juice. Hand poised to knock, he waited, listening to the interior of Foggy’s apartment.

It was quiet. The sound of Foggy’s breathing, his heart beat - steady, if a little quick. Nothing to suggest his visitors were still there. Matt was just about to knock on the door when he heard Foggy’s breathing hitch. Just a little, not enough that it meant something was wrong, but combined with the scents in the corridor that indicated recent visitors, something didn’t seem right.

He rapped twice on the door and without waiting for a response, opened it with his own key. Inside the apartment, the smell orange juice that he had detected outside combined with Foggy’s mother’s perfume was overwhelming.

“Foggy?” he called, announcing himself. He could hear Foggy in the bedroom.

As he called his name, the springs of his mattress creaked as Foggy leapt to his feet. “Matt, shit. Stay there, okay, there’s broken… don’t take your shoes off, okay?”

Matt stepped forward into the apartment, closing the door behind him as Foggy appeared at the threshold of his bedroom. Glass crunched under Matt’s feet.

“I was going to clean it up,” Foggy explained, “But I couldn’t find the… screw it, I couldn’t find anything, and I thought picking up shards of broken glass with your bare hands when you can’t see them isn’t the best idea, so…” he tailed off and Matt sensed a shrug.

Matt didn’t respond. He walked quickly across the room, into the kitchen and retrieved a dustpan and brush from the cupboard under the sink. “So, your parents?” he said as he walked back toward the mess by the door.

“One of these days it’s going to stop weirding me out when you do stuff like that,” Foggy told him. “How did you know?”

Matt allowed himself a smile, but forced himself to wipe it away before he spoke so that Foggy wouldn’t hear it in his voice. “Your mom’s perfume,” he said, “combined with your dad’s aftershave. Right outside your door.” He knelt down carefully on the floor and began sweeping up sticky fragments of the tumbler Foggy had dropped.

“Right.” Foggy sighed. He still hadn’t moved from his bedroom doorway. “Well, that went about as well as you’d expect. They turn up here unannounced, Mom starts crying, Dad pretends everything’s fine, the whole thing culminates with them telling me I need to move back home, me getting angry, and the rest is history,” From being his back, Matt was aware of Foggy’s arm sweeping over the scene in the doorway of the apartment demonstratively. “I just gestured at the apartment,” Foggy added. He sighed. “Which you already knew, didn’t you?”

It was at that point that Matt realized the orange juice that had been in the glass was splattered across the wall and the door. He swept the last of the glass into the pan, then turned to face Foggy. “I need a mop,” he said. “Or a bucket of water and a cloth. Something to get the juice up or your feet will be sticking to the floor.”

He deposited the remains of the glass into the trashcan as Foggy retrieved what sounded like a large saucepan from a cabinet, placed it in the sink and turned on the faucet.

“You didn’t knock this over, did you?” Matt said. He phrased it as a question, but he already knew the answer.

Foggy sighed. He turned off the faucet lifted the pan out of the sink and placed it on the draining board. “You didn’t hear them,” he said. “Mom was bad enough - crying and making out like my life is over isn’t exactly helpful right now, but Dad was actually worse because at least Mom was being honest.” A muted splash indicted that his searching fingers had located a dishcloth and dropped it into the waiting water.

Matt picked up the pan and carried it back over to the mess by the door. “So you thought throwing a glass at the wall was the best way to prove you were okay?” he said.

“Yeah, well, proves I can still hit a target, right?” Foggy exhaled a burst of mirthless laughter. “No, they’d already gone. Do you think I’d have ever gotten them to leave if they’d seen that? Anyway, you can hardly talk, Mr Anger Management. Remember the time you put a fist through the bathroom door because that that girl broke up with you?”

“We’re not talking about me, Foggy. I… when I make a mess, I can fix it myself.” He began to wipe up the orange juice with the cloth and wring it into the pan.

Being him, Foggy sank wearily into a chair. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Next time I’ll tidy up. Not that there’ll be a next time, because it turns out smashing stuff is nowhere near as satisfying when you can’t see it break.”

Matt shrugged and began to work on the juice sticking to the walls. “I never let that stop me,” he said.


	19. Chapter 19

It was only his third lesson. It was too soon for this.

Foggy tried and failed to slow his pounding heartbeat, relieved that Matt wasn’t around to hear it. Not that he hadn’t heard plenty of that over the past few days, of course. He reminded himself that this had to be done. Sooner or later, he was going to have to get over his anxiety and go outside, and the longer he left it, the harder it was going to be.

Nobody was staring at him. It was all in his head. People didn’t stare at Matt. Well, kids did, but kids stared at everyone. Kids turned around in booths at restaurants and watched perfect strangers eating their dinner; they didn’t have the social filters yet to know that it wasn’t acceptable. Kids stared, adults looked away and pretended not to see. No, he was almost a hundred percent certain that nobody was staring at him. Still, he couldn’t help but feel as though they were; as though they were taking advantage of his inability to see them to gawp in fascination with no danger of him calling them out on it.

He tried to push the thought away. It was stupid, nobody was looking at him, he just wasn’t that interesting.

“Okay?” Ana asked. She was standing to his left side, out of the way of his cane, close enough for him to touch her arm if the situation called for it, far enough away as to be unobtrusive.

Foggy nodded. “Yeah, just been a while since I’ve been outside. Give me a minute to acclimatize.” He took a deep breath. On the sidewalk ahead of him, he heard a man and a woman walk past, a snippet of conversation about her mother drifted on the air.

Nobody was staring at him. If they were, it was probably in awe, right? Like how he had looked at Matt as he fearlessly made his way through crowded halls and the university campus without even seeming to have to think about it.

Only, Foggy _did_ have to think about it. He had to think about it a lot, and so he needed to stop thinking about other stuff or he was going to make an ass of himself.

God, it was weird being in a space he didn’t know so well. He could imagine the street reasonably accurately, or at least he thought he could, but he didn’t know it like he did his apartment. And inside there was no possibility of encountering unexpected obstacles, things dropped in the street that could trip him up, cracks in the pavement, people who could see perfectly well not looking where they were going because they were staring at their phone. 

Open manhole covers…

Ridiculous. Concentrate.

“Alright,” he said. “Lets do this thing.” He tried to force as much enthusiasm into his voice as he could. Either Ana was fooled, or she was smart enough to know not to pull him up on it. It was probably normal to be nervous. He wondered whether it was normal to feel like you were going to throw up.

“Great,” Ana said. “So, we’re just going to take a stroll around the block, ‘kay? So, pick a direction,, left or right, doesn’t matter which, we’ll wind up back in the same place in a few minutes.”

Foggy chose left and took a hesitant step, trying to simultaneously remember every instruction he had ever been given and every correction of his cane technique. Left foot forward, cane to the right. Right foot, cane left. Don’t swing your arm around; it’s tiring and inaccurate - controlled movements of the cane with your wrist and fingers. Angle it so that obstacles aren’t going to drive the handle into your stomach. Listen to what’s going on around you, be aware of any sounds that suggest something unusual, anything out of place, anything unexpected. Feel the surface of the ground under your feet, is it sloping? Uneven? Any changes in the texture, are you standing on asphalt, on grass, on gravel? But keep moving your cane properly, left, right, keep listening, make sure you’re fully aware of where you are, where you’re going, how to get there. Don’t get distracted. Left, right, listen, feel, smell.

Don’t worry if people look at you. Nobody’s staring, it’s all in your head.

“Foggy.”

Foggy breathed in suddenly, a shocked gasp. Traffic from the street outside his house, snippets of conversation as people passed by, a car horn, the hand of a passer-by accidentally touching him then drawing back in embarrassed shock with a mumbled apology.

“Foggy, it’s okay.”

Music blaring from the open window of a passing vehicle, two kids laughing wildly as they ran past, feet light on the sidewalk. The smell of frying bacon wafting from somebody’s open window.

Jesus. And was this even a fraction of the intensity with which Matt experienced the world?

A hand touched his arm. Ana. He reached out to steady himself, resting a hand on the wall of his apartment building. “I’m good,” he muttered.

But he wasn’t. He couldn’t do it. He had walked this piece of pavement a hundred times and never thought anything of it. Now, every step was a step into the unknown and he didn’t know if he could handle it.

“You know this street, right?”

“Yeah, I…” He smiled tightly. “I thought I did.”

“You do. All we’re going to do is take a walk around the block. It’s not busy. I know it probably sounds like it is, but it’s not. Once you’ve done it, you’ll feel better, believe me.”

“Okay.” Foggy took a deep breath, tightened his grip on the cane and moved away from the wall just slightly, remaining within touching distance but allowing his hand to fall away from the brickwork. He took a step, stopped, corrected his grip on the cane, and hesitated again.

“If you really don’t want to do it, you don’t have to,” Ana told him. “I’m not here to push you into something you’re not comfortable with. You need to be ready, or your confidence will take a knock, and we don’t want that. You can absolutely do this, but if you feel better sitting at home…”

The gentle dig didn’t bother him. He did feel better at home, of course he did. The point was, he needed to be able to do this, as much as he didn’t want to. Developing a case of agoraphobia would just be embarrassing, especially while his completely blind best friend was out doing a fairly passable imitation of a horned version of Spiderman.

Foggy drew in a long, deep breath and held it for a few seconds before he released it slowly. Another car horn blared at the other side of the narrow street. “No. I’m ready,” he said. He had to be. She was right, and Matt was right, and Karen. He couldn’t stay inside forever, there was a world out there and he loved it. He wasn’t about to let some madman bomber take it away from him.

He took a second step, careful to use the correct technique, and another, sliding the cane to the other side as he did. Nothing in his way. It tapped against the side of the apartment building. Another step, and another, keeping a straight line by his position relative to the building. He was aware of Ana by his side, silent for the time being, matching his pace, ready to help if he needed it. Another step. Another. The cane swung further, the building was gone.

Foggy smiled. He knew what that meant. He turned to the left, around the corner and continued his path. He knew where he was, he knew - or at least was reasonably sure of - every buildings size and how many breaks there might be in the wall before his cane hitting air meant it was time to turn a corner. He walked, confidence and speed increasing at an equal pace.

He could do this.

Of course, this was his area. He didn’t know how he’d fare somewhere else. And there were still the roads to contend with, but he would be able to do it. The knowledge that the task wasn’t as insurmountable as he had thought buoyed his confidence and his speed increased.

He allowed his eyes to open underneath the dark glasses and he looked around. It didn’t hurt any more. All around him he could see patches of light and dark. Buildings, and the spaces between. He moved his cane again, and suddenly, unexpectedly, it hit something. Foggy stopped. He tapped the unexpected thing again. A slightly metallic clang emanated from it.

“Think about it,” Ana said.

He did. It was just over a foot wide, hollow by the sound of it.

“Can you smell anything?” Ana suggested.

Foggy took a deep breath in through his nose. The smell of frying bacon still filled the air, but there was something else now, something unpleasant, dirty. He shook his head. “Trash can,” he said. He tapped it again with the cane. “Huh, never noticed it before.”

He sidestepped the obstacle and continued on his way. Cars continued to pass in the street, people continued to walk past him, for the most part giving him a wide berth. They didn’t seem to bother him as much any more.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Less than a week to go until the new season, people! Who's excited?!

Karen ran one finger of her right hand over the embossed sheet of paper while she swirled the glass of whiskey in her left. The series of bumps there were meaningless to her untrained fingers, but she continued anyway, fascinated. “I can’t really tell any difference between the letters at all,” she confessed.

“You could if you practiced,” Foggy told her. “It’s just a matter of learning them all.”

“And you know them already?”

He laughed, it sounded a little bitter. “Nope. I learned the letters in college just after I met Matt. I had this stupid idea that I could borrow his books, I didn’t realize there are all these contractions that I didn’t know and abbreviations you need to learn if you want to read actual books and things. So no, I don’t even close to know them all, but all the ones on here, yeah. By sight, which it turns out isn’t the same thing at all.”

Karen closed her eyes and ran a finger slowly over the Braille again. “Still impressive,” she said. “Is the same person teaching you this?”

“No, Ana just does the other stuff. She gave me all this though,” he indicated the sheets of embossed paper on the table in front of him, lists of simple words in un-contracted Braille, a copy of the alphabet for reference. She’s given me the number of someone who does teach it though, but I haven’t called yet.”

“Are you going to?” Karen asked him.

Foggy shrugged. “Eventually. I kind of feel like I’m doing okay on my own for now, but as soon as I’m confident with this stuff here, yeah. After all the time my mom spent making me study when I was in school, she’d probably actually kill me if I didn’t put some time in to learn this. Plus, I imagine it’s pretty hard to be a lawyer if you can’t read.”

“I thought your mom wanted you to be a butcher,” Karen said.

“Yeah, she did. A very well educated butcher. Anyway, reading is important. I refuse to be illiterate for any longer than I have to be.”

Karen finished her drink and topped up both their glasses. “Have you seen your parents since it happened?” she asked.

Foggy snorted, expelling a short, sharp burst of air through his nose and knocked back his glass in a single gulp. “Good one,” he told her.

“Oh.” Karen realized what she had said. She covered her mouth with a hand and shook her head. “No. Shit, sorry. Have you spoken to them though?”

Foggy nodded. “Yeah, once on the phone, and then they came round yesterday, ready to drag me home kicking and screaming. I thought I was going to have to call Matt or you for backup. You’d think knowing Matt for as long as they have, they’d have more confidence in my ability to function. Or at the very least in _his_ ability to keep me alive, you know?”

Karen shrugged. “Matt’s been doing it a lot longer than you. And anyway, you’re their son, they’re always going to worry. I’d probably have done the same if I were them.”

“Great.” Foggy swept a hand across the table and found the bottle, carefully lined it up to his glass and poured a shot. He offered the bottle in Karen’s direction and she accepted and filled her own glass. As she poured, she closed her eyes and tried to work out when to stop. She miscalculated and poured a little more than she should have by the time she peeked.

“I can’t believe how well you’re doing.” Karen covered her mouth with a hand and fought the urge to actually kick herself. “That might have come out wrong,” she added. “I didn’t mean to imply I didn’t think you would, it’s just…” she floundered slightly. “You’re coping a hell of a lot better than I would, that’s all."

  Foggy shook his head. As she spoke, she had watched his expression grow more somber, but he twisted his lips now into a tight smile. “Want to know a secret?” he asked. He leaned forward conspiratorially as though to whisper and guard his words from prying ears. “It’s all an act,” he said. “I get these occasional moments where I think I’m okay, but the rest of the time I’m freaking out so badly that it’s pretty much my default setting now; literally all I can think about is how much I’m not going to be able to cope if this doesn’t get better.”

Karen edged a little closer and pressed her arm against him, comfortingly. “Oh, Foggy,” she said.

Foggy swiped at his cheeks just under the ever-present dark glasses as though wiping away unseen tears. “But hey, one good thing about this though,” he said, suddenly and unexpectedly wearing a grin. “I can drink as much as I like and no double vision. I’ll still get the spins, according to Matt, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.”

Karen frowned, but decided to let the sudden change of mood go for now. “Talking of Matt, where is he?” she asked. “I figured he’d be here by now, he’s still staying with you, right?”

“Yeah,” Foggy told her. “Still babysitting.” He downed his drink.

She ignored the words and the tone. “So where is he?”

Foggy shrugged and turned away from her as though he had been distracted by something at the other side of the room. The ruse wasn’t so effective when she knew he couldn’t see anything over there. “He’s off doing Matt stuff, he’ll be back later.”

Karen frowned and downed her drink. It occurred to her that she had no idea what Matt stuff might be. Outside of work and the occasional drink at Josie’s, she had no idea what he did with his time. She assumed Foggy was better informed than her, but apparently he wasn’t in the mood to share.

“I should get going,” she said. She poured each of them another drink.

Foggy’s head tilted just slightly in the direction of the bottle as he listened to her pour. “She says as she fills the glasses again.”

“One for the road,” Karen explained.

Foggy smiled and held up his glass to her. Karen tapped her own against it, the chink of glass on glass loud in the almost silent apartment. “You know, I went outside today and I didn’t get hit by a truck,” he said. He took a sip of his drink this time rather than downing it in one gulp. Karen did the same.

“Oh yeah? That’s great.”

“In fairness, the fact that I didn’t actually cross any roads probably had something to do with that, too,” he added, “but who knows, maybe next time we can get drinks somewhere other than my apartment. As long as someone can get me there and, more importantly, back again.”

Karen felt a grin slide easily across her face and she placed her hand on his arm, “That’s so great!” she told him.

“No promises,” Foggy added. “I don’t think I’m drunk, but I can’t guarantee this isn’t just Dutch courage talking. Wait and see what I say when I’m totally sober.”

Karen finished her drink and got to her feet. “Time to go,” she said. “Want me to put this in the kitchen?” She indicated her glass by raising it in his direction then realized her error, “The glass, I mean.”

Foggy smiled, “Yeah, I figured. Nah, leave it where it is. I can find it there.” His own drink was still sitting on the table waiting for him, he got to his feet and walked her to the door.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Karen told him as she left, “see whether that Dutch courage held.”

Foggy was smiling as he closed the door after her.

Karen licked the last of the whiskey from her top lip and exchanged a good evening with one of Foggy’s neighbors as she walked past. She pressed the call button on the elevator.

As the elevator door opened, a man emerged quickly, head covered by a hooded sweatshirt, eyes fixed downward and to the side as though to avoid her gaze. He brushed past her roughly and walked forcefully in the direction she had come.

Karen ignored him, her mind still focussed on Foggy. The elevator creaked loudly as she descended.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry! This was supposed to be up on Thursday, I really wanted to have it up before the new season hit. But then I came down with a bad case of bronchitis and laryngitis (Why do I always always lose my voice dammit?!) and I was basically in bed unable to do anything for a few days (well, except watch Netflix, of course!) So It's late, which is annoying because it'll be a little while till I get the next one up. I'm supposed to be going to Disneyland Paris next weekend (really hoping to be better by then!), so the next chapter probably won't come along until I'm home. Unless I manage it before I go, I should have plenty of writing time while I'm home sick... I'll do my best.

Foggy finished his drink. Still holding the glass in one hand, he swept his other across the surface of the coffee table and found the glass that Karen had left behind. He carried them both through to the kitchen. For a moment, he considered washing them and putting them away, but he didn’t have the energy. Instead, he placed them in the empty sink, where even if he had forgotten that they were there by tomorrow, he would find them the next time he got around to washing the dishes. Whenever that may be.

He settled back down on the couch and removed the dark glasses that covered his eyes. The damaged blur before them grew instantly brighter, but it was tolerable now. The glasses were heavy and left deep indentations on the top of his nose. Now that the light didn’t bother him so much, it was probably time to start wearing something more comfortable.

He looked around the room, taking in the areas of light and dark, the blurs of color and shapes that made up his apartment. He cast his gaze down to the table in front of the couch and examined it carefully. He reached forward toward the lighter colored patch on the brown, and grinned when his fingers connected with the Braille worksheet. He sat back, paper in his lap and found the beginning of a word somewhere in the middle of the sheet. He touched each letter individually, pausing for several seconds to make sure he was correct, rather than running his fingers quickly over the whole thing in the way that Matt did. Sometimes he still had trouble deciding where one letter ended and another began, but he was getting there. Slowly but surely, things were beginning to fall into place.

The knock on the door was so loud and unexpected that it made him jump, fingers twitching back from the page and hands suddenly held defensively in front of his body as though they would be able to protect him. He recovered quickly and cleared his nerves with a deep breath. No call had followed the knock, Matt had not announced his presence or opened the door for himself, the knock had been too loud and urgent sounding for it to be Karen, or his parents making another surprise visit.

Instinctively, he glanced down at his wrist to check the time. That didn't help anything. He knew it was late; too late for most visitors. The only person he knew that had a tendency to knock at someone’s door unexpectedly in the middle of the night was himself, and it definitely wasn’t him. He climbed warily to his feet and walked as quietly as he could across the room to the door. He hesitated, hand touching the handle lightly, and waited.

The knocking started again, so hard that he could feel the vibrations transmitted through the handle of the door. Foggy swallowed, fighting down the feeling that something was not right. He ran his hand down the side of the door until he located the chain that had been left behind by the previous tenant and attached it before he unlocked the door and turned the handle.

The door opened a few inches before the chain stopped it. Just enough to allow a conversation through the gap without letting the other person in if he decided they were better off outside. “Hello?” he said.

The response came not as an introduction or an apology for knocking on his door so late, but as a violent cracking sound as whoever was outside launched an attack on his door. Foggy’s hand, still on the handle, felt the force of the impact. The door vibrated violently under the power of the kick, but it held. Instinctively, Foggy tried to slam it closed again, but a second kick, harder this time, impacted the far too flimsy wood and he heard it start to crack.

Foggy turned and ran from the door, one hand out in front of him to protect him if he lost track of his location, the other fishing into the pocket of his pants; clumsy, panicking fingers almost dropping his phone as he pulled it out. He pressed the button on the front. “Call Matt! Call Matt!” he yelled. He barely registered the beep as the phone acknowledged the command. Behind him, the door gave way under the impact of a third, or maybe fourth kick and the intruder was inside his apartment.

Grateful for his knowledge of the inside of his apartment, Foggy crossed the room quickly. Heavy footsteps followed him, only one set, he thought, but he couldn’t be sure. Nobody spoke, there were no shouted instructions from one assailant to the other, no demands to him to stop running, just the sound of steps following him across the room, confident in the unfamiliar space because their owner could see exactly where he was going.

Foggy reached the wall sooner than he had expected, his panicked, running steps much longer than the slow, measured ones he usually used. His hands swept across the cool painted plaster of the wall until he found the light switch and pressed it, plunging the room into darkness.

He changed direction then, moving in the direction of the humming of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Somewhere behind him to his left, a thump and a shattering of glass as his attacker’s shin found the coffee table and what was left of the bottle of whiskey hit the ground and shattered. The man cried out in pain and Foggy couldn’t help but feel a victorious stab of schadenfreude.

In the kitchen, he reached for the knife rack, found it on the second sweep of the kitchen surface, and pulled out the one at the left, the largest one. He knocked the others to the ground, out of easy reach of his attacker and held the blade out in front of him as the footsteps neared him.

He swung the knife from left to right, random swipes through the air, not trying to hit anything, simply attempting to create a danger zone around his body that would keep the man out. His hands gripped the handle tightly, fighting the adrenaline fueled tremble that threatened to send the blade falling to the ground with the others.

He hit something. Something soft, there was very little sound from the impact, and he barely realized what had happened until he heard the pained bellow of his attacker.

“Agh! Shit! Fuck this!” the man yelled. He sounded young, not much older than a kid. Footsteps retreated across the room.

Foggy stood frozen in place for a time, unsure what was happening, whether the man - boy - was coming back. When nothing happened for several minutes, his body finally gave in to the urge to collapse and his shaking legs gave out and deposited him on the hard floor of his kitchen.

He sat, still holding the knife in front of him with hands supported by his knees. With the light still switched off and his damaged eyes unable to adjust to the different light level, he stared into absolute blackness, not daring to let go of his weapon.

***

There was a definite chill in the air tonight. The suit was well insulated against the cold, but where the bare skin of his jaw made contact with the night air, he could feel the winter approaching. Still months away yet, but already beginning to make its presence felt.

Four floors below him, in a cramped apartment on the east side of the building, Elaine Macintyre was pleading her case.

“It’s less than half of what you’re going to get when the insurance comes through,” she said.

There was a brief pause during which Matt imagined a shrug or a head shake, then David replied. “I don’t care. I told him already, I’m not going to bail him out again. We already paid for the car he crashed, and the one he crashed it into. How much more money are we supposed to throw away? He needs to learn some responsibility.”

“We can afford it now.”

“No, we can’t. I need that money to buy a new stall. If I’m not working, the money’s not going to last long.”

His wife sighed, deep and frustrated. “Your business blew up at the exact time your son needed money, don’t you think that maybe that means something?”

Matt heard pacing now as David walked across the room and back, still limping slightly. “Yeah, actually I do,” he said. “I think it means someone wanted me to get that money, and it it wasn’t David it was probably one of his friends. And if it turns out this was done deliberately, it’s not going to matter that I wasn’t in on it; we won’t to see a penny of that insurance payout.”

“It’ll be okay,” his wife told him. “Your customer, the one that got hurt, something tells me the cops are going to decide he was the target.”

Matt gritted his teeth and tried to decide what to do. It wasn’t as easy as busting through the window and making threats, not this time. He needed to speak to the wife, find out what she knew. If that confirmed his suspicions, he needed evidence to take to the police along with the suspect. Convincing her to confess with threats wasn’t going to work here. Her son was in trouble with some dangerous people, she was going to do anything that she could to protect him. Her husband probably would too when it came down to it.

He took a step toward the ledge at the edge of the building. He had learned everything that he was going to here tonight. Tomorrow, he would have to arrange to run into Elaine Macintyre somehow, maybe knock on her door and ask a few questions. But not now; at this time of night, as much as he wanted to.

He stopped half way to the ledge when he felt his burner phone begin to vibrate in the pouch at the waist of his suit. Normally he wouldn’t answer it at a time like this. Often, he wouldn’t even have it with him. Even set to vibrate - which he didn’t do anyway as a rule because it didn’t afford him the luxury of knowing who was calling - it made a sound that was audible to somebody with normal hearing; not conducive to the kind of sneaking around that he liked to do at night. 

Tonight was different. The past few nights had been different, unable to shake the feeling that Foggy might call him, he had taken to carrying the burner phone with him all the time. He had changed his number in Foggy’s phone to ensure that he would be able to reach him whenever he needed to.

He reached into the pouch and pulled out the phone. It was a basic model, there were no customized vibrate settings, it could be anybody on the other end, from Claire to Foggy to a telemarketer. He sighed and pressed the button to answer, unable to get rid of the ridiculous thought of fending off a sales call in the middle of a reconnaissance mission.

“Hello?”

There was no answer. For a moment, he listened to silence before the crashing sound of splintering wood and heavy, booted footsteps on an uncarpeted floor came through the line. Heavy, panicked breathing. Foggy’s. Matt froze, caught between the urges to listen and work out what was happening, and to get to Foggy’s apartment as quickly as he could. Running footsteps, the panicked breathing growing louder as glass shattered somewhere in the apartment. A clatter as the phone dropped to the ground and the line went dead.

For a split second, Matt couldn’t move. Below him in the apartment, the MacIntyres continued their conversation, but Matt could barely hear them any more. He was aware of nothing but the pounding of his own heart and the silence on the other end of the line. Finally, he thrust the phone back into his pocket, ran, and leapt from the roof of the building, momentum and the muscles in his legs propelling him to the neighboring one.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I did it, I managed to get another chapter done before my vacation! There will be a delay before I get the next one out though, sorry.

Foggy was alive. Even from outside the apartment, Matt could hear his heartbeat. It hammered far too hard and too fast, matching Matt’s own terror, and relief washed over him. There was nobody else inside.

He entered through the sliding door to the apartment’s tiny balcony. Foggy was in the kitchen. Hearing the door opening and approaching footsteps, his heart rate spiked again. “I’ve got a knife,” Foggy announced.

“It’s me.”

“Oh, thank God.” Matt could feel Foggy relax as he crossed the room to him.

He found Foggy crouched on the floor in the corner of the kitchen with his back against the doors of two cabinets. The scent of blood that he had detected on entering the apartment was stronger there, but Foggy appeared uninjured. Terrified, but uninjured.

“I think I got him,” Foggy said, his voice dulled of emotion by shock and trembling with exhaustion. Matt’s radar sense could detect the large kitchen knife clutched in his shaking hands. The smell of blood was coming from the blade. Matt bent down and took it from him. For a moment, Foggy kept his tight grip on the plastic handle of the knife, as though he couldn’t quite bring himself to relinquish his weapon. Finally, he let go, and Matt placed it carefully on the work surface before he helped Foggy to his feet. His friend rested heavily against him, his whole body trembling as Matt guided him across the room and deposited him onto the couch.

Matt could smell the splintered wood from where the assailant had forced his way through the door, which still hung open, exposing the interior of the apartment to full view of the corridor outside. From the noise and the damaged door, it must have been obvious to his neighbors that something was happening, but nobody had been by to help. If anybody had called the police, there were no approaching sirens. The building and the city as a whole felt unnaturally quiet.

“What happened?” Matt asked him. He pushed the door closed with a sharp click. A quick fingertip examination revealed that the lock was not broken, the damage was to the doorframe and the area around the chain, which had been ripped off at one side under the force of the assailant’s attack. He locked the door, then turned back to Foggy. “Foggy, what happened?” he repeated.

“I don’t… some guy broke in,” Foggy told him. “He never said anything, just came after me. I think I managed to get him with the knife, then he just took off. Never said a word.”

Matt balled his hand into a fist and managed to stop himself a split second before he hit the wall. “He didn’t say anything at all?”

Foggy cleared his throat. “He shouted ‘fuck this’ when I hit him with the knife,” he said, “but as far as clues go that’s not exactly useful.”

Matt sank into a chair and sighed deeply. There was blood outside in the hall, probably down the stairs and into the street too, but it would be too late to track him now, even if he hadn’t gotten into a taxi or getaway car, there was no way he wouldn’t have been able to stem the bleeding enough to prevent it dripping all over the floor. The trail would be cold before he got to the end of the block. Besides, he couldn’t leave Foggy. Not now, not like this. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Foggy shifted his weight a little and the springs of the sofa made a sound. “More than a little bit shaken up,” he admitted. “But hey, I managed to fight the guy off, so I’m feeling pretty good about that.” He laughed nervously. “Who needs superpowers, right? I’m also pretty relieved I didn’t give in to my mom’s demands that I move home. If they’d been there when this happened… Oh, shit, are you dressed as Daredevil? You’d better get changed; I need to call the cops, I have DNA evidence for them, and I don’t want to have to explain why there’s a vigilante on my couch.”

Matt touched the fabric of his suit with his fingertips. He had forgotten he was wearing it. He got to his feet.

“One thing’s for certain,” Foggy added. “Unless this whole thing is a huge coincidence, we know the bomber was targeting me.”

Matt froze, halfway between sitting and standing as Foggy’s words jogged a memory.

“Your customer, the one that got hurt, something tells me the cops are going to decide he was the target.

“What?”

Foggy’s voice jarred him out of the recent memory and he shook his head. “Probably nothing.” He pulled off his mask. “Call the cops, I’ll get rid of the suit.”

***

He couldn’t remember ever feeling so tired. It was a bone-deep exhaustion that seeped outward through every cell of his body. A tension headache gnawed away at his temples and the base of his skull, as he tried to force uncooperative hands to raise the now almost cold cup of tea to his lips. He winced. He didn’t even like tea that much, but for some reason it was the go-to drink in a crisis, more soothing than coffee, more grown up than hot chocolate. He hadn’t even realized he had any in his kitchen, and he had no idea who it had been - Matt, Karen, or perhaps one of the army of cops currently trooping through his apartment - that had handed it to him.

He took another sip and tried to keep his eyes open behind his dark glasses. If they did slip closed, nobody would notice of course, until the cup slipped from his unconscious fingers onto the floor. All around him, the apartment was a hive of activity. Footsteps muffled by plastic coverings over shoes, conversation, the sound of things being moved around, collected into evidence bags. Karen sat beside him, silent and tense as she watched the cops and forensics team all around them.”

“Lucky I don’t have some deep dark secret,” he muttered. He thought of Matt’s suit, hastily stashed somewhere on the roof. “It’d be all out in the open now.”

“Yeah, good thing you’ve always been the world’s worst secret keeper.”

Foggy started in surprise at the unexpected voice in front of him. Brett. He looked up to see a shadow backlit by his apartment’s main light hanging from the ceiling behind him.

“Remember that time we cut school in our junior year?” Brett continued. “I swear I still have the bruises from when my mom found out.”

“I told you then, and about once a year ever since, it wasn’t me,” Foggy told him.

Brett laughed. “No? Funny how no one ever knew about it all the times you weren’t invited,” he said. “Not saying it was deliberate, but there’s no way you didn’t let something slip.” He paused. “Are you okay?”

Foggy laughed. “I’m great, having a wonderful time. I always wondered what it’d be like to live in an active crime scene.”

“Yeah, about that,” Brett told him. “I’m not sure how long the forensics guys are going to need, and frankly, they tend to leave a mess behind. You got someplace else you can stay tonight?”

“Yes.”

The word came in stereo, one from each side of him. Matt and Karen. Foggy smiled. “Yeah, I’m all set, thanks.”

***

“This is going to be interesting,” Foggy muttered to himself. He touched Matt’s elbow as they walked through the corridor of his building, but swung his cane with the other hand. Ana was right, it was getting easier, feeling more natural. He wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.

“It’ll be fine,” Matt assured him. “You’ve been here plenty of times. Just remember all the stuff you’ve learned. And be careful of the table, the top sticks out further than you’d expect and it really hurts when you catch the corner with your leg.”

He opened the door and they went inside.

“The cops are going to run DNA on the blood from the knife,” he said, “but I already have a good idea what they’re going to find.”

“Oh yeah?”

Foggy found the couch with his cane, checked it was the couch with his fingertips then sat down and deposited his overnight bag on the floor.

“Well, not exactly. I was on the roof of the Macintyre’s apartment when you called me tonight. Dave’s wife was telling him how the cops were going to decide you were the target of the bomb.”

Exhaustion washed over Foggy and he tried to fight it off. “It was a kid, Matt. Male, too. I might not be able to see too well right now but I can tell the difference between a middle aged woman and some teenage punk.”

Matt clasped him on the shoulder. “Get some sleep,” he said, “You’re doing that thing where your brain switches off because you're tired.”

“Oh. Damn!” Foggy smacked himself lightly on the head with the palm of his hand. “Mom’s the mastermind. The kid?”

“Maybe. I don't know if he has a record though, so his DNA might not be in the database.”

Foggy made a week attempt to suppress a yawn.

“Sleep.” Matt told him. “Do you want to take the bed?”

Foggy shook his head and lifted his weary legs, feet still wearing shoes, onto the couch. “That’d involve moving, right?”

Before Matt could answer, he heard the change in Foggy’s breathing that indicated the shift from wake to sleep. Gently, he removed the dark glasses still covering Foggy’s eyes, folded them and placed them on the small table next to the couch.

“Hey, Matt, do me a favor, okay?” Foggy muttered.

Matt froze half way to the bedroom and turned back.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t do anything tonight. I know it’s important, and I feel like a baby for saying this, but I could really use some company tonight, even if I am just asleep.”

“I…” Matt swallowed. His own bed was calling him just as loudly as the city. Foggy’s breathing changed again as sleep claimed him for a second time. There was no point answering, Foggy wouldn’t hear him. “Okay,” he said anyway, then walked into his room and lay down on the bed.


	23. Chapter 23

“Hey, um… Karen, isn’t it?”

Karen looked up to see one of the guys from the accounting firm that shared their building standing in the door to the office. The door was ajar and he stood awkwardly in the gap, hand raised as though he had intended to knock but changed his mind. He was young, not quite fresh out of college but not much older. His cheap suit was a little too loose on him, as though he had lost weight recently, or simply bought something that didn’t fit because it was on sale, but he was handsome in a nerdy way. She didn’t feel much like smiling after the events of the previous night, but she forced one for him. “Hi, that’s right. What’s up?”

He looked apprehensive, shifted from one foot the other, then stepped forward into the room. He held out a white envelope to her. The address had been printed onto a label on the front, which was peeling back slightly. The text was faulty, a gray smudge running in a vertical line through the left hand side. The envelope had been ripped open at the top and inside she could see a sheet of paper. Frowning, she took it from him.

“It was delivered to us by mistake a few days ago,” the accountant explained. “Got left in a stack of bills. I didn’t realize it was yours ’til I opened it this morning and, well… it’s…” He frowned. “You might want to take a look.”

Karen slipped her fingers inside the envelope, retrieved the sheet of paper from inside and unfolded it. Her mouth dropped open as she read the words printed on the page.

“Are you okay?” The accountant asked. “Do you want me to call the police or anything?”

Karen shook her head. She placed the letter on her desk and looked at him. “It’s fine,” she told him. “Nothing to worry about.”

“You sure? Because I heard what happened to your boss, and frankly, that reads a lot like a threat.”

“I can handle it,” Karen told him. “Thanks.”

He must have left, though Karen didn’t notice him go, she was too busy staring down at the letter on the desk. She read the words for a second time, a cold dread seeping up from somewhere deep inside her. It was short, it was to the point, and it was terrifying.

Her first instinct was to call Matt. She reached for her phone, unlocked the screen and then instantly locked it again, uncertain. She read the note again.

_I failed the first time. It won’t happen again._

There was very little room for ambiguity there. The text had been printed on the same faulty printer as the label stuck on the front. The author used Helvetica, either because it was the default, or to appear as generic as possible. He hadn’t signed it. Of course he hadn’t signed it.

_I failed the first time. It won’t happen again._

Their neighbor was right, it had to be talking about Foggy, didn’t it? Unless it wasn’t. The whole thing could be some kind of misunderstanding. Or some running joke between Matt and Foggy and someone else, a friend, something they had never mentioned to her because, why would they?

She wasn’t sure exactly who she was trying to kid, but it certainly wasn’t working on herself.

She picked up her phone again and scrolled through the contacts until she found Matt’s name. It rang six times before it went to voicemail. She hung up and tried again. Same thing. She scrolled up the contacts list and touched Foggy’s name. His contact information opened, complete with the photograph she had taken of him in Josie’s bar a few months ago, with a goofy grin on his face and a half full glass of beer in his hand. Her finger hovered above his number for several seconds before she pressed cancel. She placed the phone back down on the desk, put the letter back into its envelope and slipped it into her desk drawer.

That done, she got to her feet, walked to the coffee machine and poured herself a cup. Her fingers tapped nervously on the edge of the mug, chewed fingernails tapping out a muted rhythm.

***

Matt was woken by the sound of his phone repeating Karen’s name. He reached over to answer it a split second too late, she had already hung up. He pushed back his covers and climbed out of bed, pulled on a pair of pants and shoved the phone in the pocket. He would call her back later.

He could hear Foggy, already awake and in the kitchen, rummaging through the refrigerator. He deliberately made his footsteps a little heavier as he walked out of the bedroom, to alert him to his presence.

“Tell me something, Matt,” Foggy said.

“Hmm?”

“Do you actually have anything in your kitchen apart from beer and ketchup, or am I just searching in the wrong place.”

Matt sat down heavily on a chair. “Not sure,” he admitted.

Foggy sighed and gave up his search. He felt his way slowly and uncertainly back to the couch where he had spent the night. Matt could hear his fingers trailing the counter tops and the backs of the chairs, feet searching out ahead of him nervously in a way he had stopped doing in his own home. Matt bit his lip.

“Tell me something else?” Foggy said

Matt waited.

“Did you go out last night?”

He sighed. He had wanted to. He had been about to, if not for Foggy’s last minute plea, he would have. He still didn’t know what he would have done, but he would have gone.

“No.”

Foggy shifted his position on the couch. “Too bad,” he said. “I was half hoping I’d wake up this morning to you telling me the whole thing was dealt with.”

Matt froze, suddenly not sure what he should say.

“Relax, Matt. It was a joke. Well, no, it wasn’t really, but kind of. I mean, I still don’t approve of you beating up bad guys in your spare time, but I also don’t like the idea of not being safe in my own home.”

“We’ll get them,” Matt promised him. “One way or the other.”

Foggy shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’ll believe it when I see it. Figuratively speaking. So, I was half asleep last night, tell me why you think Macintyre’s wife is the mastermind here.”

Matt licked his lips. “The insurance money. The son is in debt to a drug dealer named Kostya. I can’t find any concrete info on him, but it sounds like he’s one of the minor kingpins that have sprung up to fill the vacuum left when Fisk went to prison. At first I thought the son was responsible, but I spoke to him and he doesn’t know anything. Dave knows about the debt, but he’s planning to use the insurance money to buy a new coffee stall. It’s the wife who’s telling him to give… What?”

Foggy wasn’t exactly laughing, but the quick exhalation of air through his nose was definitely amusement.

“Sorry, nothing. It just struck me as funny, it sounds like you’re telling me the plot to some crappy daytime soap.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Carry on.”

“That’s about it,” Matt told him. “I know Elaine Macintyre is behind it, but as far as evidence goes, I don’t have any. I’m hoping the DNA from the knife is going to lead the police to someone who will implicate her. If not…”

“Then Daredevil’s going to pay her a visit,” Foggy finished for him. “Matt, I’ve never met this woman, but I’m imagining her as a plump, 50 something housewife. She might be some kind of a psychopath, but she’s no Wilson Fisk. You’re not going to break into her apartment and fight her, are you?”

Matt shook his head, but before he could answer, his phone started saying Karen’s name for a second time. “Not if I don’t have to,” Matt told him as he pulled the phone out of his pocket and answered it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one is so short, but there will be more up in a few days, promise!


	24. Chapter 24

Despite the circumstances, Matt had to admit if felt good to have Foggy back in the office. In reality, it hadn’t been that long since he had last been there, but recent events and the stress surrounding them made time appear to pass more slowly. It was true that Foggy hadn’t exactly chosen to be there; accompanying Matt to the office had been the lesser of two evils, the greater being staying in Matt’s apartment alone. Still, it felt good. It felt like progress.

Matt slid the letter toward himself across the top of Karen’s desk, and ran his fingers over the surface, not feeling the words, simply checking the texture of the paper. It was standard size A4 paper, the kind that could be bought in any store anywhere in the city, used in every office and home that owned a printer. There was nothing unusual about the texture or the thickness. As far as he could tell, it was indistinguishable from the paper in their own printer in the corner of the office.

“Should you be doing that?” Karen asked. “Won’t the cops want to check it for prints or something?”

Matt pulled his hand away. It was a good point, actually. “Yeah, probably. Sorry,” he said. “Have you called them yet?”

Karen shook her head, then checked herself and stopped. “No, I was waiting for you. I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t any chance it was something else. You know, like a practical joke, or… something.”

“Death threats,” said Foggy from his position by the door. He had stopped walking the instant they had entered the office and resisted Matt’s efforts to lead him to a chair. Instead, he leaned against the wall, one hand on the doorframe, as though he thought it might disappear if he let it go. “Yeah, hilarious. I can see why you’d think that was a joke.”

Matt heard the increase in Karen’s heart rate and sensed the subtle change in her skin temperature as she blushed.

“Okay, fine. Not a joke, but something. I just wanted to run it by you guys first,” she explained.

Matt nodded. “It’s fine, Karen. You did the right thing.” He frowned. “This was supposed to be delivered a few days ago, right? Before Foggy was attacked.”

“Yeah, only the mail man put it in the wrong box, and apparently the guys next door are even less organized than we are,” Karen said.

“Hey, I resent the implication that we’re disorganized! I hope you guys haven’t been letting things slide while I’ve been away.” Foggy interjected.

Matt leaned forward and sniffed the paper, breathing in slow and deep. The scent of the ink was strongest, but underneath it he could detect the odor of food; nothing in particular, more like the echo of a hundred home cooked meals, a few particles of cleaning products lay there too, furniture polish, air freshener. A woman’s perfume. Sweat.

When Karen had told him about the letter, he had begun to re-assess his conclusions about the case; wonder whether Foggy had been the target all along. Now, he realized that that had been wrong. If the letter had been sent with the intention of convincing the police and the insurance company that Foggy had been the target of the attack, Elaine Macintyre would have been disappointed to find that it didn’t work, which could have led to her sending the attacker to Foggy’s apartment to scare him.

“Matt?” Karen said, curious.

He stopped, stood up straight. “I thought I smelled something,” he said.

Karen’s heart rate increased suddenly. “Like what? You don’t think he put something in the envelope do you? Ricin, or…”

“No,” Matt promised her. “No ricin.”

“Someone’s been re-watching Breaking Bad,” Foggy added, still from his position by the door. The joke in his voice didn’t disguise his nerves, instead it somehow managed to amplify them. Matt wondered whether that was one of those things that only he noticed, or whether Karen was aware of it too. He hoped she wasn’t. Everything Foggy had done and said since they arrived had been planned to draw attention away from his discomfort. He didn’t know the inside of the office except by sight. Ordinarily he would have sat down, or at least moved around a little, but his reluctance to make a mistake in front of Karen, and perhaps in front of Matt too, kept him rooted to the spot.

Karen ignored the jibe. “Okay, no ricin. Good. What can you smell then?”

“Nothing,” Matt told her. “Must have been my imagination.” He smiled in a way that he hoped was convincing, trying to hide his frustration. The cops wouldn’t notice it, but this was the evidence he needed. The letter had been printed in the Macintyres’ apartment, he was sure of it. “I’ll call Brett at the precinct,” he said. “Even if it could have been printed anywhere in the city, the cops’ll want to add it into evidence.”

“It’s not as generic as you think,” Karen told him. “It’s not much to go on, but there’s a smudge right down one side of the text on the envelope and the letter. Find the faulty printer and they find the culprit.”

***

Being led was beginning to feel more natural. Foggy held his cane folded, clutched in his left hand. The urge to unfold it and make sure there were no obstacles in his way was strong, but he trusted Matt to keep him safe. Besides, two canes so close together was just asking to be the punchline of a hilarious anecdote years in the future, and stories like that were rarely as much fun to make as to tell.

They walked swiftly through the corridors of the hospital. In his mind’s eye, he built up a picture of his surroundings; their footsteps on the hard, smooth floor told him it was some kind of hard vinyl. The echoes of their feet, their voices, the trolly being pushed quickly by an orderly in the other direction, gave him a good idea of the width of the corridor, as well as the bareness of the walls. It was quiet, the few people they passed spoke in muttered whispers, their conversation coming from a position to low to be people standing. Seats then, most likely small waiting areas for specific rooms, positioned along the corridor.

Through the dark glasses covering his eyes, he could see that the area was bright, though he couldn’t detect any color. He raised the hand holding his cane to his face and lifted the glasses slightly. The brightening of the blur before his face barely hurt at all. It was still white though, or something similar. Beige, grey, neutral. It made sense for a hospital, though he never understood why the decorators didn’t think a bit of color would cheer people up a little.

Matt slowed his pace, then stopped. His cane tapped once against the metal leg of a chair. “Here,” he said.

Foggy sighed. Once, he might have been impressed with Matt’s navigation skills, wondering whether one day he might reach that level. Now, of course, he knew that he never would. 

“What?” Matt asked him.

Foggy shook his head as touched the back of the chair next to Matt’s, moving it a little, checking it wasn’t occupied before sat down. “Nothing. Just, this might be the big one,” he said. “He told me last time that I should be healed up well enough by now to get a better idea of the prognosis.”

“Oh.” Matt sucked in a breath and exhaled very slowly before he reached across and gently squeezed Foggy’s shoulder. He didn’t say anything else, no reassurances, no promises that it was going to be okay. Foggy relaxed just slightly, grateful.

“You wanna come in with me?” he asked. “I mean, you’re going to hear the whole thing anyway, right? Might as well be there for the moral support.”

Matt’s grip on his shoulder tightened slightly. “Sure,” he told him.

***

The cops were gone again. There hadn’t been much for them to do; file the note and the envelope away in an evidence bag, take a statement from the guys from the accounting firm and from her, then thank her for her time and leave her alone in an empty office.

She closed her laptop, picked up the office telephone and typed in the code to forward calls to her cell, then put the cell in her bag and left, locking the door behind her.

There was a slight chill in the air, but it was a pleasant enough day as she walked slowly down the street with no particular destination in mind. She briefly considered going home, but there was nothing for her there but a pile of laundry and a bottle of whiskey in the kitchen. It was too early to go to Josie’s. Too early for her, at least. She didn’t want word of that getting back to Matt and Foggy.

She slipped her hand into her purse to check that her phone wasn’t switched to silent. No word yet from Foggy. Most likely he hadn’t even seen the doctor yet.

She turned a corner and noticed with a start that she had been there before, not long ago. In the bright light of mid morning it looked different, less sinister, but the location was unmistakable, this was the path she had taken just a few nights before, when she had bought drugs from a teenage dealer, foolishly thinking she might learn something.

She shivered at the memory and changed direction, heading away from the apartment building as quickly as she could. She kept her gaze focussed mostly down at her feet as she walked, but glanced up occasionally, making sure that she hadn’t been recognized by anyone who may have seen her the previous night.

On the other side of the street, a man was walking in the opposite direction. He wore an angry scowl that made him look much older than the perhaps eighteen years she had seen a few days previously, but it was unmistakably the dealer. Not the Macintyre kid, but his friend. She turned away, hiding her face, but as she did, she noticed the thick, unprofessionally wrapped bandage that encased his right hand. That had definitely not been there the last time she had seen him, and Foggy had gotten in a lucky strike with the knife.

She increased her speed until she was several blocks away. When she was convinced that she hadn’t been seen, she stopped, pulled out her phone again, and texted Matt.

 

***

The doctor was the same one Matt remembered from the first time they were here, the one who had sent Foggy home the day after his injury despite Matt’s protests. It had been the right decision, as it happened. A few extra days languishing in a hospital bed wouldn’t have helped Foggy at all.

The room was small, and taken up mostly by equipment, machinery designed to look into the eye and assess any damage. The doctor sat at a desk that ran parallel to the wall on the right hand side of the room. Foggy occupied the other chair while Matt hung back slightly, trying to be unobtrusive.

Things had moved on slightly since he had last needed to be in a room like this, but not so much that he couldn’t recognize the metal and plastic casing of the equipment. He ran his fingers over the surface of one machine, fingers finding curved plastic against which a patient’s brow would rest. Below it, he found a chin rest, protected by several layers of tear away tissue paper of some kind at the front, a plastic chin-rest underneath it. He remembered the feeling placing his face into one of those, the plastic uncomfortable against his sensitive skin, the scent of whatever disinfectant had been used to clean it filling his nostrils, trying to follow the doctor’s instruction to keep still as he stared into the still unfamiliar blackness before his eyes, fighting the urge to search for vision.

His cellphone beeped and vibrated as a text message arrived; he thrust his hand into his pocket and silenced it.

“Have you noticed any improvement?” The doctor asked.

As Foggy shifted in his seat, the legs of the chair scraped against the surface of the floor with an unpleasant sound. “Some,” Foggy said. “Maybe.”

Matt pulled his hand away from the machine and listened.

“Light feels a lot less like being stabbed in the eye with a needle,” Foggy continued. “That’s got to be a plus, right?”

The doctor nodded as he scribbled a note on a piece of paper. Matt gritted his teeth. There was no way Foggy would be able to interpret that gesture. This guy was supposed to be an eye specialist. How was it that he had so little experience in how to behave around the visually impaired? Matt bit back the urge to say something.

“Okay,” the doctor said. “Let’s take a look. Can you take the glasses off?” Foggy obliged, placing the dark glasses on the edge of the doctor’s desk with the quiet sound of plastic on wood. The doctor opened a drawer and removed a piece of equipment. “The visible damage has improved significantly,” he said.

Foggy shifted just a little in his chair again. “That’s good. Though from what I’ve been told, it couldn't exactly have gotten much worse.”

“Trust me, Mr Nelson,” the doctor said. “Working in medicine I’ve come to realize that there is always the possibility of worse. I don’t like to tell people they’ve been lucky because it rarely makes them feel better, but I assure you, there is almost always somebody worse off than yourself.” His chair creaked as he leaned forward to take a look. “There is still some redness of the sclera,” the doctor said. “That’s the white part of your eye, it looks bloodshot right now, but that will continue to improve. The scarring to the cornea is visible, it gives your eyes a cloudy appearance, but it’s not so bad. The left is the better of the two, but there has been a lot of improvement in both over the past few days.”

“That’s good,” Foggy said. “And thanks, it’s been tough getting someone to tell me how I looked. I guess that’s what I get for hanging around with this guy.” The movement of the air in the room and the fluctuations in the direction of Foggy’s body temperature indicated that he was gesturing in Matt’s direction.

“I’m going to shine a light in your eyes,” the doctor said. “It won’t take too long, tell me if there’s any discomfort and I’ll stop. I just want to assess the internal damage now that the swelling has gone down.”

Foggy took a deep breath. “Okay, go for it,” he said. There was a quiet click as the doctor switched on a flashlight.

A sudden, sharp inhalation from Foggy’s direction told Matt that even if he was having less trouble with natural light, having a flashlight shone right into his eyes was still a problem. Although, if he remembered rightly, that would hurt most people.

“Have you noticed any pain not related to bright lights?” The doctor asked.

Foggy waited a moment before answering, as though he was thinking carefully about how to reply. “Nothing major,” he said. “I’ve felt a bit achy and itchy, like I need to rub my eyes, especially at the end of a long day. I’ve been resisting the urge, obviously.”

“Okay, lets look at the other one,” the doctor said. “Ready?”

Foggy’s reaction was less noticeable this time. Matt sat quietly, still trying to be unobtrusive. Outside, he could hear an argument about a parking space between two drivers in the overcrowded carpark.

“Okay, good,” the doctor said. Matt heard Foggy’s heart rate leap. His own followed suit. “Just one more thing I have to check, if I can just move you over to this machine.”

Foggy allowed himself to be led to the other side of the room and sat down in another chair as Matt listened to the standard tests being performed.

“And that will do for today,” the doctor told him.

Matt bit his lip.

“So,” Foggy said. “How are things looking?”

There was a pause. Matt got to his feet and moved a little closer to Foggy.

“You’re healing well,” the doctor told him. “You have probably noticed for yourself that the left eye is a little better than the right, but they are both about as good as we could have hoped for.” He paused again. “The main issue you have right now is the scarring to the cornea, that’s the transparent layer at the front of your eye. There is some evidence of cataracts forming, and we’ll keep an eye on that because at some point down the line you may need surgery to remove them, but right now it’s the corneal damage and the residual swelling that’s preventing you from seeing.”

Foggy nodded. “Okay…”

Matt cleared his throat, unable to keep silent any longer. “And is that something you can fix?”

The doctor directed his answer to Foggy. “The swelling will take care of itself, as for the rest, I can’t make any guarantees, and you obviously have some more healing to do first, but I think that in a few months you will be an excellent candidate for a corneal transplant.”

“I…” Foggy took a deep breath exhaled slowly before turning to face Matt as though he was looking to gauge his reaction. He turned back to the doctor. “Really?”

“It’s not a guarantee of perfect vision, Mr Nelson,” the doctor reminded him. “But we’ll do one eye at a time, and I think we have a high chance of a good result.”

Foggy swallowed audibly. “Not so long ago you said there was a 60% chance, have my odds improved?”

“60% for each eye,” the doctor told him. “The chances of both failing are much lower. But yes. I don’t like to make guesses and I certainly won’t make any guarantees, but I will say that the chances of success are much higher than 60%”

Matt gripped Foggy tightly on the shoulder. He couldn’t have stopped the grin from spreading widely across his face if he had tried.

“I… Wow. Okay…” He exhaled again through purse lips, a sigh of pure relief. “So, what do I do now?”

“Make another appointment with my secretary for, lets say a month from now, and we’ll see how things are going then take it from there.”

Foggy got to his feet and thrust a hand out in the doctor’s direction. “Thanks, doc,” he said. “I mean, really. Thanks.” He turned back to Matt and he could hear the smile on his face. “All right, lets go.”


	25. Chapter 25

Relief clashed with a combination of anxiety and excitement inside of him, and by the time they made it into the weak sunshine outside, Foggy’s legs felt as though they couldn’t quite support him. His heart was pounding far too hard and too quickly, and he knew that Matt would be able to hear it.

The change in the air as they exited the building was marked; cool, filtered, air conditioned air, tainted with the smell of antiseptic changed to something much fresher. He barely noticed the gas fumes from the parking lot outside. He felt the difference in the textures under his feet between the large fitted doormat that sat on the inside of the hospital lobby and the concrete outside. He released his grip on Matt’s arm, extended his own cane to the ground and used it to avoid a potted plant to the left of the door. He stopped, leaning against the wall of the building. He was shaking, and he wasn’t sure why.

Matt moved into position next to him. “You okay?” he asked. He sounded uncertain, as though he was genuinely not sure whether Foggy was happy or not. Foggy looked in his direction. The sunlight behind him made Matt a dark, ill-defined silhouette before an expanse of mottled but bright grays and whites.

“Yeah,” Foggy muttered. “Yeah, I’m… good. Great. I mean, it sounds like it’s going to be a while yet, but it actually sounds promising, right?” He ran a nervous hand through his hair. What little he could see of Matt didn’t give him a lot of information. Instead, he imagined him; cane clasped between both hands with the tip resting on the ground in front of him, fingers perhaps tightening and untightening on the grip they way they did sometimes when he was nervous or unsure about something, red tinted glasses covering eyes that had seen nothing for over twenty years.

The enormity of that fact left Foggy feeling off balance and he couldn’t help but wonder, despite everything that he had been given in return, whether after so many years Matt still pined for vision the way that he did? It wasn’t something they had ever really talked about, not even in the early days of their friendship when Foggy would blurt out dumb questions without thinking, and then be surprised by Matt’s candid answers, think too late about what he had said and spend the rest of the day trying to insert his fist into his mouth. He didn’t doubt that Matt was happy for him but at the same time, it had to hurt just a little that Foggy was going to see again and he wasn’t. Right?

“Are _you_ okay?” he asked.

Matt laughed. Suddenly and unexpectedly, his arms wrapped around him and squeezed him in a tight embrace. Foggy stiffened in surprise, but quickly recovered and returned the hug, every muscle in his body relaxing a little of the tension that he had been carrying around since he had woken in the hospital with his eyes bandaged.

“We should celebrate tonight,” Foggy said. “You, me, Karen. Maybe we can even venture out, drinks at Josie’s. I did promise Karen that next time wouldn’t be at my apartment. I mean, I never specifically said that wouldn’t be because I’d moved into yours…” 

Matt hesitated for a second too long. “You go. With Karen. I have something I need to take care of tonight,” he said. “I’ll come after, if there’s time.”

Foggy frowned, desperate to ask questions but unable to do so in such a public location. Instead, he chewed on his lip. It had to be done, whatever _it_ specifically was. Not just for the sake of punishing whoever was responsible, but also to keep him safe in the future. He couldn’t live constantly looking over his shoulder. Especially while he was still incapable of actually looking at anything.

“Tomorrow night than,” he said. “I want you there, Matt.”

Foggy heard Matt’s cane tap the ground as he prepared to leave. Matt’s elbow brushed his arm, a signal providing his location and indicating that it was time to move. Foggy folded his cane again and placed a hand on the offered arm. Matt began to walk away from the doors and in the direction of the parking lot. “No, call Karen, do it tonight,” he said when they were far enough away from the building not to be overheard by the smokers gathered outside. “I think the letter and the attack at your apartment were just to lead the police in the wrong direction, but just in case, I’d feel better if you were in a public place tonight. Especially at Josie’s, you’ve got friends there, people that will protect you.”

Foggy thought about it as they began to skirt the edge of the parking lot heading toward the street beyond. If he agreed to be in a public place while Matt was out playing hero, it would be difficult to change his mind, chicken out at the last minute and hold the celebration at his or Matt’s place instead. Not that he wanted to do that, he was just honest enough to admit that it was a distinct possibility.

The traffic noise grew louder as they stepped out of the hospital grounds and onto the sidewalk beyond. “Where are you going?” Foggy asked.

He felt Matt’s shrug transferred through the elbow that was his guide. “It’s a nice day,” he said. It’s only a few blocks. I thought we’d walk.” He slowed a little, “If that’s okay with you, of course?”

Foggy felt the briefest stab of panic at the prospect, before he shut it down. He took a deep of breath New York air. The sun felt warm on his back and he had just received better news than he had hoped for. Nobody was asking him to navigate the streets by himself, not yet at least, he was just taking a short walk with his friend. He nodded. “Sounds good.”

“So, tonight,” Matt said. “You’ll go to Josie’s?”

It didn't look like he had much of a choice. “We’ll see,” he said. “I was dubious about it when I thought there’d be two of you with me, but with just Karen… she’s a terrible influence, you know that, right? You know she made me drink the eel? I should call her and see if she’s up for it anyway before I start planning her evening.”

Matt slowed to a stop and reached into his pocket. “I’d forgotten,” he said. “I got a text while we were in the hospital,” Matt said. “It might be from her.” He retrieved his phone from his pocket, opened the message and played it.

“Message from Karen Page,” the voice on his phone said. “Guess who’s wearing a bandage like he might have been stabbed in the arm last night? Scummy dealer no. 2, Jr’s friend. Call me when you get this.”

“Matt,” Foggy said. “Please tell me you haven’t got Karen chasing down dangerous leads for you.”

“You were there, we just left her at the office,” Matt said. He pressed to call Karen back, starting to walk again as he did.

****

Back at Nelson and Murdock, Foggy sat in a chair this time, opposite Karen on the other side of her desk, while Matt stood to one side, occasionally turning, pacing the room and then returning to his position.

“I didn’t mean to go there,” Karen explained. “I was just walking, you know, to clear my head. Then I looked up and realized where I was. As soon as I did, I headed away, but I saw him on the other side of the street.”

“Did he see you?” Matt asked, leaning forward across the desk, his tone urgent.

Silence from Karen for a moment, then, “No. I don’t think so.”

Foggy cleared his throat. “Guys, I know I’ve been a little out of the loop, but what the hell is going on? Karen, why do you know who this guy is? Matt, why do you know that she knows who this guy is? Someone needs to tell me what’s happening right now!” He could hear the rage in his own voice, and he didn’t care. He was angry. Not at being left out of the loop, but that Karen would have placed herself in harm’s way for him.

“I saw him a few nights ago,” Karen explained quietly. “I took a stroll past the Macintyre’s building and saw him there with Dave Jr. Then I saw him again today. That’s all, Foggy, honestly.”

It didn’t sound like that was all. If his recent experiences with Matt had taught him anything, it was that people had secrets and they would lie to protect them. But this wasn’t the time to push. “Okay, and you know he’s a drug dealer how? Is this one of the guys you said you recognized from the news?”

“Yes,” Karen told him, a little too quickly.

Foggy sighed, leaned forward, placed his elbows on the desk and leaned his head on his hands. “Great. So this guy has a bandage like he might have gotten hit with a knife? I mean, it’s suspicious, but it’s probably not enough for an arrest. If looking like you might have been in a fight was enough to get you arrested, Matt could practically move into the holding cells.”

“Still,” Matt said, “It’s something.”

“Yeah, something.” It was. Something for Daredevil. Foggy sighed. He didn't think that he would ever be comfortable with the way that Matt spent his evenings, but there were times like this that he had to admit it was useful. It was going to be difficult to reconcile those two perspectives.

Foggy lifted his head up from his hands and found Karen’s approximate location by her silhouette against the window. He squinted. He wasn't sure, but he thought she was wearing blue. “Josie’s,” he said. “Tonight. That’s two pieces of good news in one day, we need to celebrate.”

“Two?” He imagined the confused look on Karen’s face phasing into realization as she remembered where he had been earlier that afternoon. ‘Oh, your appointment! What did they say?”

He shrugged and tried to keep it noncommittal, but a grin threatened to take over his expression. “No guarantees,” he said, “but he’s talking corneal transplant a few months down the line, and he won’t commit to my chances, but it sounds like they’re pretty good.”

Karen made a sound somewhere between a shriek of joy and a laugh and without him noticing her movement, she was suddenly out of her chair and wrapping her arms around him. 

“No guarantees,” he repeated.

“They have to say that. But they wouldn’t do it if there wasn’t a really good chance,” Karen told him. “Right, Matt?”

Matt cleared his throat. “I’ve read up on these before, Foggy. I think it’s going to be fine.”


	26. Chapter 26

The first time Foggy had seen the Daredevil suit, it had been in a photograph snapped by some amateur photographer and placed on the front page of the newspaper by an editor hungry for any news of somebody fighting back against the wave of crime that had been enveloping Hell’s Kitchen. He had laughed for about ten minutes. Apparently, red didn’t exactly blend into the shadows.

“I know it works for Spiderman, but he’s a daytime guy. Daredevil’s all about the creeping around in the dark. And the horns, Matt. Seriously, what were you thinking?”

He hadn’t bothered to explain that he had had no say in the design, or that he had barely even considered how it would look. He hadn’t told Foggy it had never even occurred to him to wonder what color it was. It had been a long time since color had been a word that meant anything to him in more than the most abstract of terms. These were things that even now, Foggy would not be able to understand.

It was true that when he had started out he had made a point to wear black for its camouflage against the night, but he no longer wanted to skulk around like some kind of criminal. Melvin had made the right decision when he had designed a costume that would stand out, set him apart from the criminal element he hunted, and make him into a symbol of justice.

Foggy might have been right about the horns though, but he was just thankful that Melvin hadn’t seen fit to provide him with a tail to match.

Of course, there were times when it would help to be less visible. Sometimes he needed not to be noticed, and it could be difficult to be sure of the best way to achieve that.

He stood on the fire escape at the side of the Macintyre’s building, back pressed back against the wall. He was too high up for anybody in the alley below to notice him unless they were specifically looking for him, and too far around the corner to be seen from the street.

The two kids were there again. David Jr and the still unknown friend, the attacker. Completely against his will, Matt felt his lips curl into a snarl. He flexed his fingers, took a deep, cleansing breath and readied himself.

They loitered at the front of the building, Jr sitting on a wall while his friend leaned against the front of the building smoking a cigarette. The smoke billowed up and out into the night, a plume of tar, nicotine and chemicals, the choking scent of it like a beacon pinpointing his exact location.

The original plan - if he had been generous enough to call it that - had been to speak to the mother, make her aware that he knew she was behind the attack on Foggy, heavily imply that he knew more than he did, and scare her into making a confession. That had been before he had known, or at least strongly suspected, that the kid had been responsible for the attack on Foggy. Karen’s accidental discovery had changed everything.

From where he stood, over the poisonous, choking odor of cigarette smoke, Matt could smell the drying blood from the wound on his arm. The evidence would be in his DNA. Unfortunately, not knowing his name meant he couldn’t be subject to the same digging that Karen had done into the Macintyre’s backgrounds, and he had no idea whether his DNA had ever been collected by law enforcement.

“So, what happened to the hand?” Jr asked suddenly.

Matt held his breath as he listened.

The friend snorted and feigned nonchalance. “Trapped it under the hood of a car,” he said. “Helping my uncle out last night, broke two fingers. That’ll teach me to do someone a favor, right?”

He was lying. Matt could hear it in his voice without even having to listen to his heartbeat. That was all the evidence that he needed. He checked the street around them and found it empty. He smirked to himself. There was nothing like a well timed dramatic entrance, and his target had set up the perfect one for him.

He climbed quickly from the fire escape and around the side of the building, gripping and standing on overhanging window ledges. He moved speedily enough that he hoped anyone that may have left the curtains open wouldn’t notice him passing. When he was directly above them, he pushed away from the concrete wall and leapt skillfully onto the ground beneath.

“Funny,” he said. “Because I heard you broke into a blind guy’s apartment and he stabbed you in the arm." He smirked. "I can see why you might want to keep that quiet."

For a fraction of a second, neither kid reacted. Then, as though by some psychic mutual decision, they both turned and started to run in opposite directions. Matt almost laughed. He hadn't expected them to put up much of a fight, but running away was just pathetic. He took after the attacker as he ducked around the side of the building and into the same alley where he had caught them the last time. The kid stopped, turned to face him and raised his hands toward him like he was trying to calm down a wild dog. "Hey, man. Whatever you heard, you heard wrong, okay?" He backed off a few more steps and hit the wall with one heel. "I didn't do that. I wouldn't."

Matt cocked his head slightly and paid close attention to the inflection of his words. He smiled, pulling his lips back so that it would look like a snarl, just like the savage dog the kid seemed to think he was. "You're a bad liar," he said, and landed a punch square in his jaw.

The kid grunted in pain and staggered backward against the wall. No little old lady with a cellphone to save him this time. Matt grabbed the kid by the front of his t-shirt and pulled him closer, before landing another punch that didn’t quite knock him unconscious. He slung him over a shoulder, then climbed back up the fire escape and onto the roof.

The kid groaned as he started to come around. He curled himself into the fetal position on the cold, damp roof. “Okay, okay. I did it, alright? I didn’t have any choice. Just don’t kill me, please.”

“Kostya,” Matt said. Still no luck tracking him down. “You know where I can find him?”

The kid shook his head. “Of course not! I know where to find a guy who knows where to find another guy who might… I don’t even know how many layers there are.”

“And your friend’s mother? Where does she fit into this?”

“Mrs Macintyre? She doesn’t. What are you talking about?”

His heart rate was so elevated now that Matt couldn’t tell lies from the truth anymore. “Then who sent you to attack F…the lawyer last night?”

“Okay, yeah. But I wasn’t going to hurt him, honest! Just scare him a little. You know, get him to call the cops, convince them someone was out to get him. She’s just looking out for her kid, if the insurance company thinks someone’s out to get that guy, Dave’s dad gets some money and me and Dave get to use it to pay off out debts.”

“An insurance scam,” Matt translated. He had already known this, but a confirmation was good. “The coffee place bombing.”

“That’s right! And that had nothing to do with me!”

“No?” Matt said. “So who was it?”

The kid made a sudden jump to his right, and attempted to flee the alley. Matt stopped him with a sweeping kick to his lower legs, the kid fell down into the garage with a grunt. “Dave knows I’m here,” he said.

The Macintyre kid wouldn’t be a problem. He had no combat training if their last encounter was anything to go by, and anyone he might go to for help would likely be equally useless in a fight, or too far away to be relevant. Nonetheless, he reached out with his hearing, trying to ascertain the kid’s location. He found him in his apartment, sitting on the bed, his heart rate and breathing far faster than they should be. “I don’t think he’ll be a problem,” he said. He pulled the kid to his feet and pinned him the the wall with a fist. “So, the bomb,” he said. “Who did that?”

“I don’t know! I don't know!” The kid was waving his arms again, creating a draft that hit Matt’s exposed skin in disorganized gusts and swirls. His heart was pounding, but through fear rather than an indicator of lies. “Maybe someone working for Kostya, if he found out he was insured and thought that was the only way he’d get his money back. Or, hell, maybe that was Dave’s mom too, for all I know. She’s been on this insurance money thing since it happened. Does it matter?”

Of course it mattered. Still pinning him against the wall, Matt took a step forward, closing the distance between them.

“Look, I didn’t hurt that blind guy, honest, and I felt really crappy about having to do that. I didn’t have anything to do with bombs or any of that, I’m just trying not to get killed. I owe over a grand, and interest piles on every day. Dave’s mom said she’d pay off my debt with Dave’s if I did it. So if you just let me go, I’ll…”

Matt released his grip on the kid’s chest. Without it, his trembling legs refused to hold his weight and he dropped to the ground. He stayed down, unsure whether the vigilante was doing as he asked, or giving him more rope to hang himself.

“Okay, here’s what you’re going to do,” Matt said. He leaned forward in a way that he hoped was menacing. “You left blood at the scene of the crime, so sooner or later you’re going to have the cops at your door anyway. You’re going to expedite the process by going to the precinct tonight and handing yourself in.”

“Why the hell would I do that? They don’t have my DNA, they’re not going to find me that way.”

Matt reached down and grabbed him by his t-shirt, twisting the fabric into a tight ball. “I could tell you that you might be able to cut a deal,” he said. “Give them Elaine Macintyre and your dealer contact in exchange for a reduced sentence, and you should do that too - your lawyer will tell you the same thing. But the real reason? You think you’re scared of Kostya? Wait until you see what I can do to you.”

***

“Matt just texted,” Karen said. Foggy waited for her to open the message. She sighed. “He’s done with whatever he was doing, but he’s just going to meet you at his place.” He heard her put the phone away, thrusting it angrily into her purse. “I still can’t believe he didn’t come,” she added, her confusion and irritation at Matt’s behavior was obvious even over the noise of the bar.

Foggy shrugged. He had realized much earlier that he and Matt should have come up with a plausible explanation for his absence, but in the influx of unaccustomed good news, it had somehow been overlooked. He picked up his glass, tilted it one way and then the other, trying to get a better idea of how much was left by the weight and feel, and took a swig. He allowed himself a moment to celebrate the small victory.

The noise level in Josie’s had grown steadily since they arrived, drowning out the sound of the television behind the bar. Over at the pool table, someone made a break. It sounded like a good one. He mumbled a noncommittal answer in Karen’s direction and hoped she would let it go, assuming his reply lost to the background noise.

“What?” He somehow felt, rather than heard, Karen leaning in closer to hear his reply.

It was strange, ever since he had learned Matt’s secret, he had never once imagined himself covering for him. Matt had never asked, rightly assuming that it would rekindle Foggy’s anger at the situation. Unfortunately, not having planned for the possibility left him with no ideas. He briefly toyed with the truth disguised as a joke, _‘He had someone to beat up.’_ He dismissed it, decided he may have had more to drink than he had intended and smiled in a way that he really really hoped was convincing. “It’s fine, he had something important to do.”

“More important than this?” He imagined the unconvinced look on her face and was sure that he was spot on. He didn’t know how Matt had managed to keep his secret for so long. Lying to someone you cared about just felt horrible.

“Unfortunately, in my experience, most things are more important than going out for drinks. But yeah, he didn’t tell me what it was but it sounded pretty important.”

“Well, whatever it was, he should have put it off ’til tomorrow.” He heard the sound of an empty glass being placed on the bar from her direction. He took a few swigs of his beer. He had been pacing himself all night, careful not to drink too much. Josie’s may feel like home, but it wasn’t, and if he turned around too quickly, he would be completely lost. It wasn’t a feeling that he enjoyed.

“Want another one?” Karen asked him.

He shook his head. “Better call it a night.” He dropped his voice a little and leaned in closer. “Don’t want to have to visit the bathroom in this place right now. Who knows what I’d accidentally step in.”

“I’ll have you know I keep my bathrooms spotless,” Josie’s voice interrupted.

Foggy grimaced. “Yeah…You seem to have forgotten that the last time I was in there I could see just fine. You’re not talking to Matt here, Josie. And even if you were, he’s got a pretty good sense of smell. Anyway, it’s fine, I wouldn’t change a thing. It lends a bit of character, right, Karen?”

If Karen responded, he didn’t hear it. Josie huffed as she walked away.

“Hey, you’ll put this on our tab, right?” Foggy called after her.

“She nodded,” Karen told him.

Foggy finished the last dregs of his beer, set the empty glass on the bar and got to his feet. He was hit by a wave of disorientation that he wasn’t sure whether he should blame on the drinks or the fact that he couldn’t remember which end of the bar they were sitting at. Which may have had something to do with the drinks, now he thought of it.

He oriented himself quickly, listening for the direction of the music from the jukebox. Karen touched his arm, and he allowed her to lead him through the bar and out onto the street.

The cool night air was a stark contrast to the fusty odor of stale beer inside. He took a deep breath, stepped to one side of the door to avoid getting in the way, and extended his cane. He allowed it to rest on the ground in front of him. He looked around.

Now that the light sensitivity had faded to a tolerable level, he had ditched the hospital issue sunglasses in favor of his own pair that he liked to wear during the summer. Even with the lighter glass, the night looked like a field of inky blackness punctuated by points of light that expanded into wide halos. The traffic on the road was the worst, disorienting with its constant movement. He closed his eyes.

“This was nice,” he said. “I’ve missed doing normal things.”

“New glasses?” Karen asked seemingly out of the blue.

“Old ones.” He pushed them up his nose, and grinned. “I’m still getting used to the sunglasses at night thing. I feel like I’m on a mission from God.”

“Um,” Karen floundered. “What?”

Foggy shook his head. “Movie reference. Doesn’t matter.”

“Well, they look good,” she told him.

They didn’t even look good in Central Park in the middle of summer. The only reason he had gotten away with keeping them for so long was that the main person he hung out with had no idea how ridiculous he looked. “Nice of you to say,” he told her. “Liar. Okay, shall we go?”

“Yeah.” Karen stepped in front of him, then stopped, turned around. “How do you want to…”

He wasn’t sure. It was such a short walk from here to Matt’s apartment that most cab drivers would refuse to take him. “I can lead you,” she suggested. “Like you do with Matt.”

Foggy shook his head. It wasn’t that he didn’t think she could do it. Of course she could, it was just, he had something to prove here, and with the streets quieter than he would ever get during the day, the alcohol inside him buoying him on and Matt not around to witness his humiliation if it all went wrong, he wasn't going to get another opportunity like this. “Not so fast there Page,” he said with a smile to let her know that it was a joke. “I heard how many drinks you were knocking back tonight. You’d probably walk me into a wall or something.”

Two blocks. He could do that. He lowered his cane until the tip touched the pavement, and took a deep breath. “Just keep me pointed in the right direction and make sure I don’t step into traffic, okay?”


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry! I know its been ages. I thought I'd have the chapter up a week ago, but things kept getting in the way. I'm here now though, please forgive me!
> 
> This could easily be the last chapter. It almost was, until I started on the epilogue. But the end is definitely nigh, people...

The precinct was so loud and hectic. Foggy had spent a fair amount of time there in the past, but until now he had never noticed just how busy it was. People brushed past him, not even acknowledging his presence. Conversations were shouted across the room, others drifted in and out of his hearing as people walked past him. The unappealing mixed scent of coffee and sweat filled the air.

He held his cane extended and touching the ground just a few inches in front of his feet. Suddenly, it jerked to the left as a foot caught the tip. Instinctively, he took a defensive step forward, closing the distance between himself and the front desk. Someone muttered an embarrassed apology and he tried to force a smile as he shrugged it off. Probably not convincingly. To his left, an order shouted at a recent arrestee rose above the general background noise of a busy workplace.

Foggy folded his cane out of the way. He squeezed it tightly in his hand, feeling the smooth texture and the way the sections bumped against each other under the pressure of his fingers. He took a deep breath and touched the top of the desk with his free hand. He couldn’t tell whether anybody was there. “Hello?” he said.

“How can I help?” a voice answered him. Male, maybe mid 20s. He vaguely recognized the voice, like maybe he had spoken to its owner once before, but he couldn’t put a face to it. “Franklin Nelson, here to see Brett Mahoney,” he said.

“Sure, take a seat,” the man on the desk told him.

Foggy gritted his teeth and tried to remember the layout of the room. Chairs should be to his left. He squinted through his glasses, but couldn’t see anything useful. Instead he re-extended his cane and made his way carefully in what he guessed was the right direction. To his relief the end of the cane quickly found the metal leg of a plastic chair. It did not find a pair of feet between the legs. He touched the back of the chair anyway, hand moving in from the side, shifting it just slightly to confirm that it was empty, then he sat and refolded the cane.

He didn’t have to wait long for Brett to appear. A hand touched his shoulder. “You’re early,” Brett told him. “You’re never early.”

Foggy shrugged. “Its an aberration, don’t get used to it,” he said. He didn’t say that getting around took longer now and he was still working out how much longer, or that he had been planning for the possibility of getting lost. He got to his feet and Brett offered him his arm like he had been doing it all his life.

They turned a few corners, enough to get Foggy lost, until he heard a door closing behind him.

“Chair’s just in front of you,” Brett told him.

He took a step forward, reaching out with his hand and located the back of the chair. He sat down, and felt himself relax. Brett closed the door behind them, blocking out the noise of the precinct. 

“Are you okay, Foggy? You look kind of stressed out.”

Foggy bit back a quip about Brett’s detective skills and shrugged instead. It was his first time venturing out alone and he _was_ stressed, but it was stress mingled with pride. “Nah, I’m good,” he said. “So, the cop that called me said you’ve got the guy.”

“Denise, yeah. She told you I’d come to you if you wanted, right? I didn’t mean to make you come all the way down here.”

Foggy nodded. “I’d rather get out. You know how you get sick of staring at the walls when you’re stuck at home sick? Turns out it’s actually worse when you can’t see them. Weird, right?”

Brett didn’t say anything. Foggy could almost feel his discomfort as he strove to think of some appropriate response. Foggy shrugged internally, dismissing it. He was going to have to get used to that, at least for as long as he had to wait for his operation. 

“So, you caught the guy?” Foggy said again, letting Brett off the hook for now. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he might have heard a literal sigh of relief. 

“Yeah. Well, kind of. A few months ago, I’d have said this was the strangest thing I ever saw. Of course, I’ve seen some crazy stuff recently, so this is pretty much exactly what I’d expect now.” Brett told him. “The kid just turned up at the precinct, told us he wanted to make a confession and practically begged the desk sergeant to take his DNA there and then.”

Foggy tried not to smile. He didn’t approve of what Matt did, he never would. But just this once, whatever it was he had done last night had paid off. “And he did it?” he asked.

“Yeah, looks like. DNA was a match for the blood in your apartment, he’s pointed us in the direction of a local dealer, plus the woman that sent him to attack you. It was Elaine Macintyre, the wife of the other bombing victim. Can you believe that? The threatening letter sent to your office was printed on the Macintyre’s home printer, and we can prove that because of a fault on it that smudged the ink. As soon as she realized we had her, she confessed too.”

He had known most of what Brett was telling him already. He hoped Brett wouldn’t realize from his reactions. As much as he enjoyed implying otherwise just to annoy him, he was a good cop, he was trained to notice that kind of thing. To make matters worse, if there was any suspicion there, Foggy wouldn’t be able to see it in Brett’s eyes. He cleared his throat and tried to think of something to say. “So, open and shut case,” he settled on.

Brett paused for a second before answering, and Foggy imagined either a shrug or a nod filling the gap in the conversation. “Not quite,” he told him. “We’re looking at months of work. The kid’s told us about a fairly substantial drug operation. We play our cards right and we could shut down a pretty major player and get a lot of coke and heroin off the street.”

Foggy nodded.

“But as far as you’re concerned, yeah, it’s over,” Brett told him. “You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the Macintyres thought attacking you again would get them their insurance money.”

“Not all of them. You just said Mrs Macintyre,” Foggy said.

Brett sighed. “Maybe. That remains to be seen. Either way, so far the kid and Elaine Macintyre are both planning to plead guilty, so you might not have to give evidence in court, but people change their minds, so be prepared.”

Foggy nodded. “Won’t be a problem,” he said. “You need anything else now? If not, I’ve got to get to work.”

“You’re back at work? That’s great!”

Foggy could hear the grin in Brett’s voice, and he couldn’t help but feel a stab of pride. He shrugged self deprecatingly. “Sort of. First day today, and between you and me, Matt and Karen don’t even know. I figured I’d surprise them. But I have no idea how much help I’m going to be there though. It’s more to stop me going mad with boredom than to actually do anything useful.”

Brett’s hand clasped Foggy’s arm warmly. “I’m sure you’ll do great,” he said.

“Just bear us in mind if you find any potential clients,” Foggy told him. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “There’s a box of cigars in it for your mom.”

The hand dropped from his arm and Brett sighed. “Nothing ever changes, does it?”

Foggy shrugged. “Actually, it does. I’d love to make a quick exit and leave you staring after me in silent rage, but I’m not there yet, so as it is I’m going to ask for your help finding the exit and then get back in the taxi that brought me here to travel just a few more blocks. Just, don’t be an asshole about it, okay? Give me a few more weeks before the jokes start.”

“There won’t be any jokes,” Brett promised him.

Foggy shook his head, “That’s disappointing. I’ve got a few good comebacks stored up already. Okay, lend me your elbow.”


	28. Epilogue 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, It's been ages again! I'm so sorry, real life ran away with me, plus I've been sick for a week or so... anyway, here it is finally. And by way of an apology for my slow writing (can you believe I've been writing this story for a whole year!?) I bring you not one epilogue, but two.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who has read, left kudos and left comments, I wouldn't have been able to finish with without your encouragement. I hope you enjoy these final two parts.

Foggy pushed open the door with a flourish and entered the office with a grin on his face.

“Morning, kids,” he said. He allowed the door to swing closed behind him with a bang.

Six weeks had passed surprisingly quickly, and although the ophthalmologist had told him there was still a chance he might see some more improvement before the operation, he didn’t think it was likely. After no noticeable change at all for the past two weeks, Foggy had a feeling that this was as good as it was going to get. That was okay. He didn't have a definite date for the surgery yet, but he knew it was coming.

“Hey, Foggy,” Karen greeted him from behind her desk. “What’s got you in such a good mood?”

He shrugged, “Oh, I don’t know, just a little thing called I walked to work this morning.”

“Seriously? That’s great!”

Foggy’s grin grew wider as he leaned his cane against the wall by the door. Only a few weeks ago, the idea had seemed impossible. He was still taking the O&M lessons with Ana, and they were finally paying off. “Goodbye expensive daily taxi ride,” he said, waving theatrically as though bidding it goodbye.

“What’s going on?”

He could just about make out Matt standing in the door of his office.

“Foggy’s a grown-up again,” Karen told him.

He shot a scowl in her direction, before turning his attention to Matt, who knew exactly what was going on, but was playing dumb for Karen’s sake. “That’s right, I can now officially be trusted to walk about a mile without getting lost or hit by a car. Be impressed.”

“I could do that when I was ten,” Matt told him, somehow managing to sound impressed and unimpressed at the same time.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Foggy turned and headed for the coffee pot.

“Well done, Foggy. Really.”

He didn’t know why he bothered turning away to hide his smile. “So, what’s on the agenda for today?”

His question was met by an unexpected silence. He turned back to face them both, worry beginning to gnaw at the pit of his stomach. “Guys?”

Karen tapped her fingernails a few times on the surface of her desk, then cleared her throat. “I just got off the phone with a new client,” she said. She paused, and if Foggy concentrated hard enough, he could imagine the expression on her face. “Um…”

“It was David Macintyre,” Matt finished for her. “He wants us to represent his son.”

Foggy’s mouth opened to answer, then closed again. He worked his jaw up and down, trying to think of an appropriate response. “And we told him what?”

“That we’d meet with him,” Matt said. “He’s coming by later today. No guarantees. We wanted to run it by you first.”

***

“He didn’t have anything to do with this,” Macintyre said. “Honestly, he didn’t. He did a stupid thing, selling drugs, getting into debt with that dealer. He deserves to be punished for that, but he had nothing to do with the explosion, or the attack on you at home. That was all my wife and that Davison kid. He’s just gotten swept up in it because of his connection to them both.”

Foggy frowned as he listened to the story.

“He’s not dealing any more. You probably heard on the news they got the head of the gang the other week. Davey’s had an offer to go apprentice for his uncle in Atlanta, but he can’t do anything with this hanging over him.” Macintyre sighed deeply and rested both his elbows on the table in front of him loudly. “I’m so sorry for what happened to you, Fogg…Mr Nelson, but you know my kid didn’t do it, don’t you? Christina, my wife… my ex. She’s the one that paid someone to arrange the bomb, she convinced Dave’s friend Andy to attack you so the insurance company would stop thinking I set the bomb myself for the money. She’s admitted it all and she’s going to jail for it. Andy too. It’s just the cops can’t believe my kid wasn’t in on it.”

Foggy licked his lips and tried to think of an appropriate answer, but before he could, Matt asked the question that he had been holding back. “Why come to us, Mr Macintyre? There are a hundred other law firms in the city that would take this case. Why did you choose Nelson and Murdock?”

“Well…” Macintyre shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “Two reasons really. First one was you told me to. When they arrested me a few months back you gave me your card, told me to call if I needed representation.” He cleared his throat and dropped the volume of his voice just a little for the second part of his answer, “And frankly, I thought it’d look good. You know, the guy who got injured representing the one on trial.”

To Foggy’s left, Karen made an irritated noise. Foggy found himself smiling. “Yeah, I can see how that would be an advantage.” He paused, thoughtful. “So, am I right in assuming you never got the insurance money in the end?”

“I can afford to pay, if that’s what you want to know. My parents set up a college fund for Dave years ago, they never told us about it, planning to surprise us when he got accepted somewhere. Since he decided not to apply, they probably never would have told us if this hadn’t happened. But they’re willing to use it to pay for his defense.”

Foggy mulled it over, wishing that he could steal a glimpse at Matt and Karen’s faces to get an idea of their reaction. His gut told him to say no, but his brain told him that it was a paying case. Matt had told him already that the son had nothing to do with the bombing. It was an innocent client that could pay them. It didn’t get much better than that.

“Matt, Karen?” he said. “What do you think?”

“Completely up to you,” Matt told him.

Not helpful. He sighed and turned back to Macintyre. “I haven’t been in a courtroom since this happened. If it goes to trial, I still can’t guarantee I’ll be ready, so you might not get that particular advantage.” Not that that would be a huge issue, everyone would still know which law firm was representing him.

“I understand,” Macintyre told him.

Foggy ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled through pursed lips. “We need to meet with him first. Assuming we’re convinced he really wasn’t in on it,” he lifted his glasses and rubbed very carefully at an itch underneath his left eye. “Assuming that,” he repeated, “then yeah, we’ll represent him.”


	29. Epilogue 2

“Apparently it might be weeks or more before I can see properly again,” Foggy said. “And you should read this information sheet! The list of things that can go wrong. I know they have to cover their bases, but honestly it reads like they’re trying to put people off. Listen to this.” He ran his finger slowly over the braille on the page on his knee. “Rejection, glaucoma, infection. Retinal detachment. That’s a bad one.”

Matt reached out and took the sheet of paper from Foggy’s hands. He placed it on the table next to the bed. “None of that is going to happen,” he said.

Foggy sighed. “I know,” he said. He picked the paper back up along with the ballpoint pen left by the nurse. He tapped the pen several times at the bottom of the page, in the approximate location of the signature line. “Things do happen though. That’s why they make you sign stuff like this.”

“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” Matt asked him.

“No.” He tapped the pen a few more times. “Well, only in the most theoretical of ways,” he added. Foggy rested the bottom of the paper on his knee and signed his name.

“It’ll be fine,” Matt told him.

Foggy’s fingers found the aftercare section of the information sheet and began to read slowly. “I know,” he said. “And hey, even if if does go wrong they’re only doing the one eye today. I have a spare, right?”

“Not funny,” Matt told him.

“Not meant to be. Hey, it says here I should have a friend drive me home after,” Foggy said. “Care to volunteer?”

Matt laughed. “Absolutely,” he promised. He stilled, then tapped Foggy on the arm. “They’re coming for you.”

Foggy took a deep breath as he heard shoes approaching on the hard floor.

“Mr Nelson?” a woman’s voice, not one he recognized. He nodded. “I’m going to take you through to surgery now, if you’re ready.”

Foggy smiled. “I’ve never been more ready for anything in my life.”

“I’ll see you after,” Matt told him.

Foggy shook his head. “Doubtful, buddy, but give me a few days and I might just about be able to see you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
